Les Miserables (Movie Tie-in) (9781101612774)

by Hugo, Victor; Donougher, Christine (TRN)

  Their roundabout course brought them to the quarter of the Rue Mouffetard, as profoundly asleep at that hour as though this were the middle ages and the curfew still in force. They passed through a number of streets, the Rue Censier, the Rue Copeau, the Rue du Battoir-Saint-Victor, and the Rue du Puits-l’Ermite, in which there were lodging-houses, but none that suited Valjean. He could still not be sure, if after all he was being pursued, that he had wholly covered his tracks.

  Eleven o’clock was sounding from the church of Saint-Étienne-du-Mont as they passed outside the police post in the Rue Pontoise, which was on the dark side of the street. A moment later the instinct to which we have referred prompted him to look back. He was in time to see, by the light of the lantern over the doorway of the post, the figures of three men moving in his direction, one of whom went into the building. The leader of the party looked to him decidedly suspect.

  ‘Come, child,’ he said to Cosette and hurriedly left the Rue Pontoise.

  He made a detour, by-passing the Passage des Patriaches, which was closed at that hour, and following the Rue de l’Épée-de-Bois and the Rue de l’Arbalète, came to the Rue des Postes. Here, on what is now the site of the Collège Rollin, there was an open space at the junction of the Rue des Postes and the Rue Neuve-Sainte-Geneviève. (It goes without saying that the Rue Neuve-Sainte-Geneviève is far from being a new street, nor do post-carts travel along the Rue des Postes; in the thirteenth century it was a street of potters and its true name is Rue des Pots.)

  The open space was bathed in moonlight and Valjean took refuge in a doorway, reckoning that if the men were still following him he could not fail to see them as they crossed over. And indeed, less than three minutes later they appeared. There were now four of them, tall men in brown tail-coats wearing round hats and carrying truncheons. No less sinister than their size and powerful build was their stealthy progress through that shadowed world. They were like ghosts disguised as citizens.

  They stopped in the middle of the intersection and stood in a group as though consulting together. They seemed undecided. The one who appeared to be their leader turned and pointed energetically in the direction Valjean had taken, but another seemed equally convinced that they should go the opposite way. When the first man turned the moon shone full on his face, and Valjean now knew that it was Javert.

  II

  The Pont d’ Austerlitz

  This was the end of uncertainty for Jean Valjean but, fortunately for him, not for that of his pursuers. Their loss of time was his gain, and taking advantage of their indecision he left the doorway in which he had been hiding and retreated along the Rue des Postes in the direction of the Jardin des Plantes. Cosette was beginning to tire, so he picked her up and carried her. There was no one about and the street lamps had not been lighted because of the brightness of the moon.

  Increasing his speed, he came in a few strides to the Poterie Goblet on the façade of which was still to be seen the ancient inscription proclaiming its wares – ‘Jugs and jars, flower-pots, drain-pipes, tiles.’ Passing the Rue de la Clef and the Fontaine Saint-Victor, he rounded the Jardin des Plantes by the streets at its lower end and so came to the river embankment. Here he turned to take stock of his position. The embankment, like the streets he had passed through, was deserted. He breathed again.

  At the Pont d’Austerlitz, which in those days was still a toll-bridge, he went to the toll-collector’s box and offered him a sou.

  ‘Two sous,’ said the war-veteran who kept the bridge. ‘You’re carrying a child who is able to walk. You must pay for two.’

  He did so, annoyed at having thus drawn attention to himself. All flight should go unnoticed. A large cart came up at this moment, making like himself for the right bank of the river, and this was helpful to him; by walking beside it he could cross over in its shadow. Halfway across Cosette, whose legs were growing stiff, said that she would rather walk. He put her down and took her hand.

  Across the river he saw timber yards a short distance to his right and decided to make for these. In order to reach them he had to cross a wide open space, but he did so without hesitation, believing that he had thrown his pursuers off the scent and was for the moment out of danger – pursued but not closely followed.

  Between the walls of two of the yards there was a dark and narrow street, the Rue du Chemin-Vert-Saint-Antoine, which seemed to be exactly what he was looking for.

  Before entering it, however, he turned and looked back. From where he stood he could see the whole length of the Pont d’Austerlitz. He saw four shadowy figures at the far end. They were coming away from the Jardin des Plantes, heading for the right bank.

  So after all he had not lost them. Valjean quivered like a hunted animal finding the hounds still on its trail. One hope remained to him. It was possible that the four men had not reached the bridge in time to see him cross the open space hand-in-hand with Cosette. In that event, by following this narrow lane, he might find himself in a region of timber-yards or cultivated plots or waste-land where he would have a good chance of escaping them. The silent, narrow lane looked safe, so he entered it.

  III

  A vanished quarter

  After some three hundred yards the lane forked. Valjean found himself confronted by the arms of a Y. Which to choose? Without hesitation he went to the right.

  He did so because the left fork led in the general direction of the town, back to inhabited places, whereas the right led away from the town, towards open country.

  He was no longer walking fast, being obliged by Cosette to go more slowly. He picked her up again and carried her, and she rested her head on his shoulder without speaking. He looked back from time to time, along the straight length of lane behind him. The first two or three times he did this he saw and heard nothing and, somewhat reassured, he continued on his way. But then, as he turned his head again, he seemed to detect a distant movement amid the shadows through which he had passed. He hurried on, more running than walking, hoping to come to a cross-road which would again enable him to put their pursuers off the track.

  He came to a wall. It was not a wall which prevented all progress, being the boundary-wall of a lane crossing the end of the one he was following. Once again he had to decide between left and right.

  He looked right. The new lane ran past a cluster of buildings which were either warehouses or barns and then came to a stop, ending in a high white wall that was clearly visible. To the left, however, it was open, debouching after a hundred yards or so into a wider street. Clearly he must go this way.

  But as he was about to turn left he saw, standing at the end of the lane where it entered the street, a dark figure motionless as a statue. It seemed that a man had been posted there to bar his passage.

  The part of Paris which Valjean had now reached, situated between the Faubourg Saint-Antoine and La Rapée, was one of those which have been completely transformed by recent developments, rendered hideous according to some people and improved according to others. The market-gardens, the timber-yards, and other old buildings have all gone, to be replaced by broad new streets, amphitheatres, circuses, hippodromes, railway-stations, and a prison – progress accompanied by its corrective.

  Half a century ago, in the language of common use, deriving so largely from tradition, which persists in referring to the Institut de France as ‘les Quatre-Nations’ and to the Opéra-comique as ‘Feydeau’, this particular part of Paris was known as ‘le Petit-Picpus’.* The Porte Saint-Jacques, the Porte Paris, the Barrière des Sergents, the Porcherons, La Galiote, Les Célestins, Les Capucins, Le Mail, La Bourbe, L’Arbre-de-Cracovie, La Petite-Pologne, Le Petit-Picpus, all these are names surviving from the old Paris into the new. Popular memory lives on the relics of the past.

  Le Petit-Picpus, which scarcely existed and was never more than the approximation of a quarter, had something of the monkish aspect of a Spanish town. Its streets were poorly paved, its houses scattered. Except for the two or three streets with which we
are concerned it was a region of walls and open spaces, without shops or vehicles, with only an occasional candle to be seen in a window and where all lights were extinguished after ten. Gardens, convents, timber-yards, and marshes; a few single-storeyed houses enclosed in walls as high as themselves.

  Such was the quarter in the last century. It was roughly handled by the revolution, the aediles of the Republic having pulled down houses, run roads through it and established rubbish-dumps. Thirty years ago it began to disappear under the spread of new development, and today it has completely vanished. No present map of Paris contains any reference to Le Petit-Picpus, although it is clearly indicated on the 1727 map, published in Paris by Denis Thierry, Rue Saint-Jacques, and in Lyon by Jean Girin, Rue Mercière. Le Petit-Picpus centred around what we have called a Y of streets formed by the forking of the Rue du Chemin-Vert-Saint-Antoine, the left fork being the Petite Rue Picpus and the right the Rue Polonceau. What may be termed a cross-bar united the two arms of the fork, its name being the Rue Droit-Mur. The Rue Polonceau ended there, but the Rue Picpus went on in the direction of the Marché Lenoir. Whoever came from the Seine and reached the end of the Rue Polonceau had to his left the length of the Rue Droit-Mur, with its wall directly facing him, and to his right a short extension of the same street, with no outlet, known as the Cul-de-sac Genrot.

  This was where Jean found himself.

  Seeing the dark form at the corner of the Rue Droit-Mur and the Rue Picpus, he started back. There could be no doubt that the man was on the watch for him.

  What was he to do? His retreat was cut off. The movement he had detected some distance behind him must mean that Javert was there with the rest of his party. Javert, evidently familiar with that maze of alleyways, had sent one of his men to cover the exit. Conjectures, so near to certainties, poured through Valjean’s troubled mind like dust stirred by a gust of wind. He studied the Rue Picpus; that way a sentry stood on guard – the dark figure as he stared towards it was sharply silhouetted against the moonlit pavement. To go on was to fall foul of him; to go back was to fall into the hands of Javert. Valjean felt himself caught in a net that was slowly tightening. He looked despairingly up at the sky.

  IV

  Ways of escape

  To understand what follows calls for a precise picture of the Rue Droit-Mur and in particular of the sharp turning which was on the walker’s left as he entered this lane from the Rue Polonceau. The Rue Droit-Mur was almost entirely flanked on the right, as far as the Rue Picpus, by poor-looking houses; and on the left by a stark composite building made up of several sections which increased in height as they approached the Rue Picpus, so that the building was lofty at its far end but low at the end nearest the Rue Polonceau. Here, at the turning, it was nothing but a wall. But this wall did not exactly follow the line of the street; it was deeply recessed, so that anything within the recess was hidden from observers standing at a distance from it in the Rue Polonceau or the Rue Droit-Mur.

  The wall on either side of this recess ran along the Rue Polonceau as far as a house bearing the number 49, and along the Rue Droit-Mur, where it was far shorter, to the building we have described, joining it under the gable and thus forming another re-entrant angle. This gabled façade was forbidding in appearance, having only one window, or rather, a pair of permanently closed vine-covered shutters.

  The back of the recess was entirely filled by something that looked like a huge and crudely constructed doorway, a vast, shapeless assembly of perpendicular planks, those above wider than those below, the whole held together with long transverse strips of metal. At one side there was a porte-cochère of ordinary dimensions which had evidently been installed within the past fifty years. The branches of a lime tree hung over the wall, which at the Rue Polonceau end was covered with ivy.

  To Jean Valjean, in his perilous situation, the apparent solitude and remoteness of the building had their attractions. He looked it over rapidly, feeling that if he could get inside he might be safe. Hope dawned in him.

  Adjacent to all the windows on each floor of the central part of the building was the open mouth of an old leaden drain-pipe. These numerous pipes, all leading to a central conduit, formed a pattern not unlike that of a grape-vine trained up a farmhouse wall. This was the first thing that struck Valjean. Seating Cosette with her back to the wall, and telling her not to make a sound, he ran to the spot where the conduit reached the ground, thinking that perhaps the pipes might enable him to climb into the building. But the conduit was rotten with age and its fastenings far from secure; moreover all the windows were closely barred, even the dormer windows in the roof. In addition, the whole front of the house was bathed in moonlight, so that the observer at the end of the lane would certainly see him if he attempted the climb. And finally, would he be able to carry Cosette up the façade of a three-storey house?

  He gave up this idea and crept back to the recess. Here at least he could not be seen, and it might be possible for him to force the door. The ivy-clad wall, above which the branches of the lime tree showed, must surely enclose a garden in which, despite the absence of foliage, they might be able to hide for the rest of the night

  Time was passing. He had to move fast. He tried the porte-cochère and discovered at once that it was fastened on both sides. The main door looked more hopeful. It was in a thoroughly dilapidated state, and the more vulnerable because of its great size; the planks were rotten and the iron bands holding them together, of which there were only three, were badly rusted. But when he came to examine it he found that this door was not a door at all; there were no hinges, no lock and no division at the centre. The iron bands ran without a break from one side to the other. Peering through the gaps between the planks, he could see roughly cemented stonework beyond them. He had to conclude, to his consternation, that what looked like a door was simply woodwork concealing a building. He might remove a plank, but then he would be faced by a wall.

  V

  Impossible by gas-light

  At this moment a muffled, regular sound became audible in the distance. Valjean ventured to peer out of the recess. Some seven or eight soldiers in two files had just entered the far end of the Rue Polonceau. He caught the gleam of bayonets. They were coming his way.

  The squad, at the head of which he could discern the tall figure of Javert, was advancing slowly and cautiously, and making frequent pauses, evidently to investigate every nook and cranny, every side-alley and doorway. This could only mean that Javert, having fallen in with a military patrol, had taken it under his command and that his own two men were marching in its ranks.

  From the speed of their advance, and their constant pauses, Valjean reckoned that it would take them perhaps a quarter of an hour to reach the place where he was. It was an appalling thought. Those few minutes were all that separated him from the abyss which now yawned before him for the third time. But this time it meant more than prison; it meant the loss of Cosette, a life that would be a living death.

  There was only one possible way out.

  Jean Valjean had the singularity that he might be said to be doubly endowed, on the one side with the aspirations of a saint, on the other with the formidable talents of a criminal. He could draw on either as the case required.

  It will be recalled that among his other gifts, acquired in the course of his numerous escapes from the prison in Toulon, he was a past master of the art of climbing walls without artificial aids, simply by muscular strength and dexterity, using back, shoulders, and knees in any angle or chimney, and profiting by any roughness of surface which might afford a toe- or finger-hold. By these means he could climb as high as six storeys if necessary. It was a talent which had caused the corner of the courtyard of the Conciergerie in Paris, whereby the condemned criminal, Battemolle, had escaped, to become famous.

  Valjean considered the wall at the point where the branches of the lime tree were visible above it. It was about eighteen feet high. The lower part of the angle it made with the big building was f
illed by a triangular block of masonry probably designed to prevent this convenient corner from being put to insanitary use. Such preventive devices are common in Paris.

  The block was about five feet high, and the distance from it to the top of the wall was not more than another fourteen feet. The wall was flat-topped, without spikes or other obstacle.

  The problem was Cosette. He had no thought of abandoning her, but to carry her up to the top of the wall was impossible. A man needed all the strength he possessed for this kind of climb; the least added burden would upset his centre of gravity and bring him down.

  A rope was what he needed, but he had none. How could he hope to procure one at midnight in the Rue Polonceau? If Jean Valjean had possessed a kingdom he would certainly have exchanged it at that moment for a rope.

  Extreme situations bring flashes which may blind or inspire us. Looking frantically about him, Valjean noticed the lamp-bracket in the Cul-de-sac Genrot.

  At that time there was no gas-lighting in the streets of Paris. Oil-lamps hanging from widely-spaced brackets were used, and these were lowered for lighting by means of a stout cord, the end of which ran into a grooved post. The reel on which the cord was wound was enclosed in an iron box to which the lamp-lighter had a key, and the cord itself was encased in metal up to a certain height.

  With the energy of desperation, Valjean darted across the end of the Rue Polonceau into the cul-de-sac, broke open the box with his knife and an instant later had rejoined Cosette. He had his length of rope. Men in the utmost necessity can move wonderfully fast.