Les Miserables (Movie Tie-in) (9781101612774)

by Hugo, Victor; Donougher, Christine (TRN)

  There is in a prison escape an element of the miraculous that is not always realized. The man on the run, let us repeat, is a man inspired. There is starlight and lightning in the mysterious glow of flight, and the straining for liberty is no less remarkable than the soaring of the spirit to the sublime. To ask, of the escaped prisoner, how did he manage to achieve the impossible, is to ask, as we do of Corneille, ‘When did he know that he was dying?’

  However it may be, Thénardier, dripping with sweat and soaked with rain, clothes in shreds, hands skinned and knees and elbows bleeding reached the top of the ruined wall and lay stretched at full length along it, his strength exhausted. There was a drop of three storeys to the ground, and the rope he had with him was too short.

  He lay there pale and helpless, all hope abandoned, still sheltered by the darkness but knowing that it would soon be light, expecting at any moment to hear the clock of the Church of Saint-Paul strike four, at which hour they would come to relieve the guard outside his cage and find him in a drugged slumber. He lay there contemplating in a kind of stupor the wet, dark surface gleaming faintly in the street lights at a terrible depth below him, the solid earth of liberty that could be his death. He was wondering if his three confederates had made good their escape, if they were awaiting him, if they would come to his aid. Excepting a police-patrol no one had gone along the street while he was there. Nearly all the market-gardeners from Montreuil, Charonne, Vincennes, and Bercy went to the market by way of the Rue Saint-Antoine.

  Four o’clock struck, and he started. Very shortly afterwards the confused hubbub which accompanies the discovery of an escape broke out in the prison, the opening and slamming of doors, the screech of hinges, the thud of running feet, the voices hoarsely shouting; until finally the clatter of musket-butts on the paving of the courtyard sounded almost below him. Lights shone behind the barred windows of the dormitory and a torch moved along the attic roof of the New Building. The firemen from the near-by station had been summoned to assist, and their helmets, gleaming in torchlight under the rain, could be seen on the rooftops. At the same time he saw the first pallid glow of sunrise in the sky beyond the Bastille.

  He was lying, incapable of movement, along a wall some ten inches wide, with a sheer drop on either side of him, dizzy at the possibility of falling and in horror at the certainty of capture, his thoughts swinging between these two alternatives like the pendulum of a clock - ‘I’m dead if I fall and caught if I don’t.’ But suddenly he perceived amid the darkness of the street the figure of a man creep cautiously past the house fronts from the Rue Pavée and come to a stop in the recess, above which Thénardier was as it were suspended. He was joined by a second man moving with the same caution, then by a third and a fourth. When they were all together one of them opened the gate in the fence and they moved into the enclosure where the shed was - that is to say, almost directly below Thénardier. They had evidently chosen the recess as a place where they might confer without being seen by anyone in the street or by the sentry at the prison-gate, which was only a few yards away. In any case, the sentry was being kept in his box by the rain. Thénardier, unable to distinguish their faces, listened to what they said with the desperate attentiveness of a man at his last gasp. And suddenly he had a ray of hope. The men were talking argot, that is to say, thieves’ slang.

  One of them said, speaking in a low voice but quite clearly:

  ‘Décarrons. Qu’est-ce que nous maquillons icigo? – We’ve got to clear out. What’s the good of hanging about here?’

  Another said:

  ‘Il lansquine à éteindre le riffe du rabotuin. Et puis les coqueurs vont passer; ily a là un grivier qui porte gaffe, nous allons nous faire emballer icicaille. – It’s raining fit to dowse the fires of hell Besides, the law will be along. There’s a soldier on guard back there. We’ll be copped if we stay here.’*

  The two words, icigo and icicaille, both meaning ici (here), and of which the first belongs to barrier-slang and the second to the slang of the Temple, were highly enlightening to Thénardier. The first pointed to Brujon, who was a barrier-prowler, and the second to Babet, who among his many callings had once been a huckster in the Temple market. It was only in the Temple that the ancient slang of the Grand Siècle was still spoken, and Babet was the only one who spoke it perfectly. Without that icicaille Thénardier would not have recognized him, for he had entirely disguised his voice.

  Another of the men said:

  ‘There’s no hurry, we might as well wait a little. We can’t be sure he won’t need us.’

  From this, which was in plain French, Thénardier recognized Montparnasse, who made it a point of pride to understand all the slangs and speak none of them.

  The fourth man said nothing, but his huge shoulders were enough. Thénardier had no doubt that it was Gueulemer.

  Brujon answered almost excitedly, but still keeping his voice low.

  ‘What are you getting at? The innkeeper hasn’t made it because he doesn’t know how. He’s an amateur. To weave a sound rope out of a blanket, bore holes in a door, cook up false papers, make skeleton keys, cut through leg-irons, hide everything and get away using the rope, it takes skill to do all that. You’ve got to know your business. The old fellow wasn’t up to it.’

  Babet added, speaking still in the recondite, classical argot used by Poulailler and Cartouche, which, compared with the coarse, lurid slang of Brujon, is like the language of Racine compared with that of André Chénier:

  ‘He’s probably been caught. He’s nothing but a novice. He may have talked and given himself away. You can hear that shindy in the prison, can’t you, Montparnasse? You can see the lights. He’s been caught for certain. He’ll be inside for another twenty years. I’m no coward, no one’s ever said that of me; but there’s nothing to be done and no sense in hanging about here until we’re all in the bag. It’s no use worrying, come along and we’ll split a bottle or two of wine.’

  ‘You can’t leave a friend in the lurch,’ muttered Montparnasse.

  ‘I tell you he’s caught,’ repeated Brujon. ‘He’s sunk and there’s nothing we can do. Let’s clear out. I’m expecting to feel a hand on my shoulder any minute.’

  Montparnasse continued to protest, but only weakly; the fact is that the four men, true to the code of loyalty among thieves, had spent the night hanging round the prison, regardless of the risk to themselves, hoping to see the form of Thénardier appear on top of some part of the wall. But it had been too much for them. The streets emptied by the pouring rain, themselves numbed with cold in their drenched clothes, the disturbing sounds issuing from within the prison, the time wasted, the police patrols, the waning of hope and growth of anxiety - all this prompted them to retreat. Even Montparnasse, who may have been especially beholden to Thénar – dier, being perhaps his unofficial son-in-law, was disposed to give way. In another moment they would have gone, and Thénardier on his wall groaned like the men of the Medusa on their raft when the ship they had sighted vanished over the horizon.

  He dared not call out, since by doing so he might give himself away, but one resource was left to him. He fished out of his pocket the short length of rope he had detached from the grille over the chimney, and tossed it into the enclosure. It fell at the men’s feet.

  ‘That’s my rope,’ said Brujon.

  ‘The innkeeper’s up there,’ said Montparnasse.

  They looked up and Thénardier thrust his head into view.

  ‘Quick,’ said Montparnasse to Brujon. ‘Have you got the rest of the rope?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Tie the two bits together and chuck one end up to him. He’ll have to fix it to the wall There’ll be enough for him to slide down.’

  Thénardier ventured to speak.

  ‘I’m numb with cold.’

  ‘We’ll soon get you warm.’

  ‘I can’t move.’

  ‘You’ve only got to slide down. We’ll catch you.’

  ‘My hands are frozen.’
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  ‘Just tie the rope to the wall.’

  ‘I couldn’t do it.’

  ‘One of us will have to go up,’ said Montparnasse.

  “Three storeys!’ said Brujon.

  An old plaster flue, part of a stove which at some time had burned in the shed, ran up the wall very near where Thénardier was lying. It has broken off since then, being very much the worse for wear, but traces of it are still to be seen. It was very thin.

  ‘Someone could climb up by that,’ said Montparnasse.

  ‘That bit of piping?’ said Babet. ‘A grown man? You’re crazy. Only a kid could do it.’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Brujon. ‘We need a boy. But where are we to find one?’

  ‘I know where. I’ll fetch him,’ said Montparnasse.

  Softly opening the gate and peering up and down the street to make sure that there was no one about, he closed it carefully behind him and set off at a run in the direction of the Bastille.

  Some seven or eight minutes elapsed during which Babet, Brujon, and Gueulemer did not speak. Then the gate was opened again and Montparnasse reappeared, panting, with Gavroche at his side. The street was still deserted.

  Gavroche stood calmly surveying the men with rainwater dripping from his hair.

  ‘Well, lad,’ said Gueulemer, ‘can you do a man’s job?’

  Gavroche shrugged his shoulders and replied in the broadest argot:

  ‘Kids like me are grown up and coves like you are kids.’

  ‘He’s got the gab all right!’ said Brujon.

  ‘So what do you want me to do?’ asked Gavroche.

  ‘Climb up that chimney-pipe,’ said Montparnasse.

  ‘Taking this rope with you,’ said Babet.

  ‘And tie it near the top of the wall,’ said Brujon. ‘To the crossbar of the window.’

  ‘And then?’ said Gavroche.

  ‘That’s all,’ said Gueulemer.

  Gavroche considered the rope, the flue, the wall, and the window and clicked his tongue in an expression of scorn at the simplicity of the task.

  “There’s a man up there,’ said Montparnasse. ‘You’ll be saving him.’

  ‘Will you do it?’ asked Brujon.

  ‘Don’t be daft,’ said Gavroche, as though the question were insulting, and he slipped off his shoes.

  Gueulemer picked him up and set him on the roof of the shed, the planks of which sagged under his weight, then passed him the rope, which Brujon had re-tied during Montparnasse’s absence. Gavroche went up to the flue, which ran through a hole in the lean-to roof; but as he was about to start his climb, Thénardier, seeing the approach of rescue and safety, peered down from the wall. The pallid light of dawn fell upon his sweat-dewed face, the white cheekbones, flat, barbarous nose and tangled grey beard, and Gavroche recognized him.

  ‘Blow me,’ he exclaimed, ‘if it isn’t my father! Well, no matter.’

  Taking the rope between his teeth, he began to climb. He reached the top of the ruined wall and, sitting astride it, tied the rope securely to the upper crossbar of the window. Within a minute Thénardier was down in the street.

  The moment his feet touched the ground, feeling himself out of danger, he lost all sense of fatigue, chill, and terror; the sufferings of the past hours vanished from his recollection like a puff of smoke, and that strange, ferocious intelligence was instantly alert and free, ready for further action. These are the first words he spoke:

  ‘Well, so now who are we going to eat?’

  No need to dwell upon the significance of that horridly lucid word, which meant to murder, to beat to death, to plunder – ‘eat’ in the literal sense of ‘devour’.

  ‘Let’s get away fast,’ said Brujon. ‘Just a word and then we separate. There was a job that looked hopeful in the Rue Plumet, two women living alone in an isolated house in an empty street, with a rusty iron gate to the garden.’

  ‘Well, what’s wrong with it?’ asked Thénardier.

  ‘Your wench, Éponine, had a look round and she gave Magnon the “biscuit”. There’s nothing to be done there.’

  ‘She’s no fool,’ said Thénardier. ‘All the same, we ought to make sure.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Brujon. ‘We might look it over.’

  The men had paid no further heed to Gavroche, who during this conversation had seated himself on one of the stones supporting the fence. He waited a little longer, perhaps expecting his father to say something to him, then he pulled on his shoes and said:

  ‘Is that all? You don’t want me any more? Well, I’ve done the job, so I’ll be going. I’ve got to see to those kids of mine.’

  He then left them.

  The five men left separately. When Gavroche had disappeared round the corner of the Rue des Ballets, Babet drew Thénardier aside and said:

  ‘Did you look at that youngster?’

  ‘What youngster?’

  ‘The one who climbed the wall and brought you the rope.’

  ‘Can’t say I did much.’

  ‘Well, I’m not sure, but I have an idea he’s your son.’

  ‘What!’ said Thénardier. ‘You don’t say!’

  And he departed.

  [Book Seven: Argot, will be found as Appendix B at page 1243

  Book Eight

  Enchantment and Despair

  I

  Broad daylight

  THE READER will have gathered that Éponine, having recognized the girl behind the wrought-iron gate in the Rue Plumet, whither she had been sent by Magnon, had begun by putting the ruffians off that particular house, and then had led Marius to it; and that Marius, after spending several days of ecstatic contemplation outside the gate, gripped by the force that draws iron to a magnet and the lover to the stones of his beloved’s dwelling, had finally entered Cosette’s garden much as Romeo had entered that of Juliet. It had indeed been less troublesome to him than to Romeo. Romeo had had to climb a wall, whereas Marius had needed only to force one of the rusty bars of the gate, which were already as loose in their sockets as an old man’s teeth. He was slender and had had no diffiuclty in wriggling through; nor, since there was never anyone in the street and he went only after dark, did he run any risk of being seen.

  Following that blessed and hallowed hour when a kiss had sealed the lovers’ vows, he went there every evening. If at this moment in her life Cosette had had to do with an unscrupulous libertine, she would have been lost; for there are warm hearts whose instinct is to give, and she was one of those. Among the most great-hearted qualities of women is that of yielding. Love, when it holds absolute sway, afflicts modesty with a kind of blindness. The risks they run, those generous spirits! Often they give their hearts where we take only their bodies. That heart remains their own, for them to contemplate in shivering darkness. For with love there is no middle course: it destroys, or else it saves. All human destiny is contained in that dilemma, the choice between destruction and salvation, which is nowhere more implacably posed than in love. Love is life, or it is death. It is the cradle, but also the coffin. One and the same impulse moves the human heart to say yes or no. Of all things God has created it is the human heart that sheds the brightest light, and, alas, the blackest despair.

  God decreed that the love which came to Cosette was a love that saves. During that month of May in the year 1832, in that wild garden with its dense tangle of undergrowth that grew daily more impenetrable and richly scented, two beings composed wholly of chastity and innocence, bathed in all the felicities under Heaven, nearer to the angels than to men, pure, truthful, intoxicated and enraptured, shone for each other in the gloom. To Cosette it seemed that Marius wore a crown, and to Marius Cosette bore a halo. They touched and gazed, held hands and clung together; but there was a gulf that they did not seek to cross, not because they feared it but because they ignored it. To Marius the purity of Cosette was a barrier, and to Cosette his steadfast self-restraint was a safeguard. The first kiss they had exchanged was also the last. Since then Marius had gone no further tha
n to touch her hand with his lips, or her shawl, or a lock of her hair. To him she was an essence, rather than a woman. He breathed her in. She denied him nothing and he demanded nothing. She was happy and he was content. They existed in that state of ravishment which may be termed the enchantment of one soul by another, the ineffable first encounter of two virgin spirits in an idyllic world, two swans meeting on the Jungfrau.

  In that first stage of their love, the stage when physical desire is wholly subdued beneath the omnipotence of spiritual ecstasy, Marius would have been more capable of going with a street-girl than of lifting the hem of Cosette’s skirt, even to above her ankle. When on one occasion she bent down to pick something up and her corsage gaped to disclose the top of her bosom, he turned his head away.

  What did take place, then, between those two? Nothing. They adored each other. The garden, when they met there after dark, seemed to them a living and consecrated place. Its blossoms opened to enrich them with their scent, and they poured out their hearts to the blossoms. A vigorous, carnal world of flowing sap surrounded those two innocents, and the words of love they spoke set up a quiver in the trees.

  As to the words they spoke, they were breaths and nothing more, but breaths that set all Nature stirring. They were a magic which would have little meaning were they to be set down on paper, those murmurs destined to be borne away like puffs of smoke under the leaves. If we rob the words of lovers of the melody from the heart that accompanies them like a lyre, what remains is but the shadow. Is that really all? - mere childishness, things said and said again, triteness, foolishness and reasonless laughter? Yes that is all, but there is nothing on earth more exquisite or more profound. Those are the only things that are really worth saying and worth hearing, and the man who has never heard or uttered them is a bad man and a fool.

  ‘You know…’ said Cosette. (They addressed each other instinctively as ‘tu’, neither knowing how this had come to pass.) ‘You know, my real name is Euphrasia.’

  ‘Euphrasia? But you’re called Cosette.’