Marius’s disappointment at finding himself confronted by a stranger turned to disgust as he examined the visitor more closely while the latter was exaggeratedly bowing.
‘What do you want?’ he asked sharply.
The visitor responded with a grimace which may be likened to the smile of a crocodile.
‘I find it hard to believe that I have not already met Monsieur le Baron in society – at the house of Princess Bagration, perhaps, or of the Vicomte Dambray?’ To pretend acquaintance with someone whom one has never met is always a shrewd move in the performance of a confidence trick.
Marius had listened attentively to the sound of the man’s voice, and with a growing disappointment. He had a nasal intonation quite different from the thin, dry voice which Marius had expected.
‘I know neither Madame Bagration nor Monsieur Dambray,’ he said, frowning, ‘and I have never visited either of them.’
Despite the terseness of his manner the visitor was not discouraged.
‘Well, then, perhaps it was at the home of Chateaubriand. I am on the friendliest of terms with Chateaubriand. He quite often asks me in for a drink.’
Marius’s frown grew darker.
‘I don’t know Monsieur de Chateaubriand either. Will you please come to the point. What can I do for you?’
The visitor bowed more deeply than ever.
‘At least, Monsieur le Baron, do me the honour of listening to what I have to say. There is in America, in the region of Panama, a village called La Joya. It consists of a single house. A big, square, three-storey house built of bricks baked in the sun. Each side of the square is five hundred feet long, and each floor is set back twelve feet from the one below it, forming a sort of terrace which runs right round the building. There is an interior courtyard in which provisions and munitions are stored. There are no windows but only loopholes, no doors but only ladders – ladders leading from the ground to the first terrace, from the first to the second terrace and from the second to the third; ladders for climbing down into the courtyard. No doors to the rooms but only trap-doors; no stairways to the rooms but only ladders. At night the traps are closed and the ladders are drawn up, and loaded guns and carbines are installed at the loopholes. The place is a house by day and a fortress at night, with eight hundred inhabitants. That is the village. Why so many precautions, you may ask? Because it is situated in very dangerous country, full of cannibals. So why does anyone go there? Because it is a wonderful country in which gold is to be found.’
‘Why are you telling me all this?’ demanded Marius, who was becoming increasingly impatient.
‘I am a wearied ex-diplomat, Monsieur le Baron. Our ancient civilization has become oppressive to me. I want to live among savage people.’
‘And so?’
‘Egotism, Monsieur le Baron, is the law of life. The day-labourer working in the fields looks round when the coach passes, but the peasant proprietor does not bother to do so. The poor man’s dog barks at the rich and the rich man’s dog barks at the poor. Everyone for himself. Self-interest is the object of all men and money is the loadstone.’
‘I’m still waiting.’
‘I want to settle in La Joya. There are three of us. I have a wife and a very beautiful daughter. It is a long journey and it costs a great deal. I need a little money.’
‘What has that to do with me?’
Stretching his neck out of his cravat in a gesture proper to a vulture, the visitor smiled with redoubled ardour.
‘Has Monsieur le Baron not read my letter?’
This was not far from the truth. The fact is that Marius had paid little attention to the contents of the letter, being more interested in the handwriting. In any case, a new thought had occurred to him. The man had mentioned a wife and daughter. Marius looked at him with a searching scrutiny that not even an examining magistrate could have bettered, but he only said, ‘Go on.’
The visitor thrust his hands in his waistcoat pockets, raised his head, without, however, straightening his back, and returned Marius’s gaze through the green-tinted spectacles.
‘Very well, Monsieur le Baron, I will go on. I have a secret to sell you.’
‘A secret which concerns me?’
‘To some extent.’
‘Well, what is it?’
‘I will tell you the first part for nothing. You will, I think be interested.’
‘Well?’
‘Monsieur le Baron, you have living with you a thief and an assassin.’
Marius started.
‘Not living with me,’ he said.
Smoothing his hat with his sleeve, the visitor imperturbably continued:
‘A thief and an assassin. Please note, Monsieur le Baron, that I am not talking about bygone transgressions that may have been cancelled out by process of law and repentance in the eyes of God, but of recent events, present happenings not yet known to the law. A man has insinuated himself into your confidence, almost into your family, under a false name. I will tell you his real name and I will tell you for nothing.’
‘I’m listening.’
‘His name is Jean Valjean.’
‘I know that.’
‘I will also tell you, also for nothing, what he is.’
‘Please do.’
‘He is an ex-convict.’
‘I know that too.’
‘You know it now that I have told you.’
‘No. I knew it already.’
Marius’s cool tone of voice and his apparent indifference to the information had their effect upon the visitor. He gave Marius a sidelong glance of fury which was rapidly extinguished; but brief though it was, it was not lost on Marius. There are looks like flame that can only come from beings of a certain kind; tinted glasses cannot hide them; they are like a glimpse of Hell.
The visitor smiled.
‘I would not venture to contradict Monsieur le Baron. In any case you will see that I am well-informed. And what I now have to tell you is known to no one except myself. It concerns the fortune of Madame la Baronne. It is a remarkable secret and it is for sale. I am offering it to you first of all, and at a low price – twenty thousand francs.’
‘I know this secret already, just as I knew the others,’ said Marius.
The visitor thought it judicious to lower his price.
‘Well, let us say ten thousand.’
‘I repeat, you have nothing to tell me. I know what you’re going to say.’
The visitor’s expression changed.
‘But I’ve got to eat, haven’t I? Monsieur le Baron, this is an extraordinary secret. I will let you have it for twenty francs.’
‘I tell you I know it already,’ said Marius. ‘Just as I knew the name of Jean Valjean and know your name.’
‘Well, that’s not difficult, seeing that I wrote it in my letter and have only just told you. It’s Thénard.’
‘You’ve left out the rest of it.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Thénardier.’
‘Who might he be?’
In moments of peril the porcupine raises its quills, the beetle shams dead, and the infantry forms a square. This man laughed and airily flicked a speck of dust off his sleeve.
‘You are also the workman Jondrette,’ Marius went on, ‘the actor Fabantou, the poet Genflot, the Spaniard Don Alvarez, and the widow Balizard.’
‘The widow what?’
‘At one time you kept a tavern at Montfermeil!’
‘A tavern? Never!’
‘And your real name is Thénardier.’
‘I deny it.’
‘And you’re a thorough rogue. Here, take this.’
Marius got a banknote out of his pocket and tossed it in his face.
‘Thank you, thank you, Monsieur le Baron!’ The man bowed while he examined the note. ‘Five hundred francs!’ He murmured in an undertone, ‘That’s real money!’ Then he said briskly: ‘Well, we might as well be at our ease.’
And with remarkable adroitness
he removed his disguise – the false nose, the tinted glasses and the two small tubes of quill which we mentioned just now and which figured in an earlier part of this tale* – stripping them away like a man taking off his hat. His eyes brightened, his uneven, knobbly and hideously wrinkled forehead was disclosed, and his nose was again a beak; in short, the avaricious, cunning countenance of the man of prey reappeared.
‘Monsieur le Baron is infallible,’ he said in a clear voice from which all trace of a nasal intonation had disappeared. ‘I am Thénardier.’
And he straightened his back.
Thénardier was considerably taken aback and might even have been put out of countenance had this been possible for him. He had come there intending to astonish, and had himself been astonished. The fact that his humiliation had been rewarded with the sum of five hundred francs, which he had made no bones about accepting, had put the finishing touch to his amazement.
He was seeing this Baron Pontmercy for the first time in his life; nevertheless the baron had recognized him in spite of his disguise and seemed to know all about him. He seemed also to know all about Jean Valjean. Who on earth could he be, this almost beardless young man who was at once so icy and so generous, who knew all about everybody and treated rogues like a judge while at the same time paying them like a dupe? It must be borne in mind that although at one time Thénardier had been Marius’s neighbour, he had never set eyes on him, a thing that happens often enough in Paris. He had written the letter we have just seen without having the least idea who he was. There was no connection in Thénardier’s mind between the Marius occasionally referred to by his daughters and the present Baron Pontmercy. Nor did the name of Pontmercy mean anything to him because of the episode on the field of Waterloo, when he had heard only the two last syllables, which had not interested him since he had not supposed them to have any cash value.
For the rest, thanks to his daughter Azelma, whom he had put on the track of the bridal pair on 16 February, and thanks also to his own researches and his underworld connections, he had picked up a good many scraps of information. He had discovered, or perhaps guessed, who the man was whom he had encountered in the sewer, and from this it was a short step to finding out his name. He knew that the Baroness Pontmercy was Cosette; but as to this, he had decided upon discretion. Who, after all, was Cosette? He himself did not precisely know. Thoughts of illegitimacy had occurred to him, since he had always regarded Fantine’s story with suspicion, but what good would it do him to mention this? To be paid to keep silent? He had, or thought he had, something better than that to sell. It also occurred to him that to come to the Baron Pontmercy with the tale, unsupported by evidence, that his wife was a bastard would be to invite his boot on his backside.
To Thénardier’s way of thinking his conversation with Marius had not yet really begun. He had been obliged to give a little ground, to modify his tactics, but nothing essential was lost and he was already the richer by five hundred francs. He had something important to say, and well-informed and well-equipped though the Baron Pontmercy was, he felt that he was in a strong position. To men of Thénardier’s stamp, every conversation is a contest. How did he stand in the one which was now about to begin? He did not know whom he was talking to, but he knew what he was talking about. He rapidly surveyed his resources, and having admitted that he was Thénardier he waited.
Marius was also thinking. At last he had caught up with Thénardier. The man whom he had so long sought stood before him, and he could carry out the injunction laid upon him by his father. It was humiliating to know that the dead hero should have owed his life to a scoundrel and that the blank cheque he had left behind him had not hitherto been honoured. It seemed to Marius also, in his complex state of mind where Thénardier was concerned, that there were grounds for avenging his father for the misfortune of having been saved by such a man. In any event he was pleased. The time had at last come when he could rid his father’s shade of this unworthy creditor, and it was as though he would be releasing his father’s memory from a debtor’s prison.
But apart from this he had another duty, namely, if possible to resolve the mystery of the source of Cosette’s fortune. It was a matter in which Thénardier might be of some assistance.
Thénardier had carefully stowed the five-hundred-franc note in his pocket and was smiling almost tenderly at Marius. Marius broke the silence.
‘Thénardier, I have told you your name. Do you want me also to tell you the secret you were proposing to sell me? I, too, have sources of information, and you may find that I know rather more than you do. Jean Valjean, as you say, is a murderer and a thief. He is a thief because he robbed a wealthy manufacturer, Monsieur Madeleine, whom he ruined. And he murdered the policeman, Javert.’
‘I don’t understand, Monsieur le Baron,’ said Thénardier.
‘I will explain. Round about 1822 there was a man living in the Pas-de-Calais who had at one time been in trouble with the law, but who, under the name of Monsieur Madeleine, had fully rehabilitated himself. He had become a man of probity and honour, and he had established a factory making objects of black glass which had brought prosperity to a whole town. It had also made his personal fortune, but this was as it were a secondary consideration. He looked after the poor, founded schools and hospitals, cared for the widow and the orphan – became in some sort the guardian angel of the region. He was elected mayor. A released convict who knew his background denounced him and took advantage of his arrest to draw from the Paris banking house of Laffitte – I have this from the chief cashier in person – a sum of over half a million francs belonging to Monsieur Madeleine, whose signature he forged. The released convict was Jean Valjean. As for the murder, Jean Valjean murdered the police agent, Javert. I know because I was there at the time.’
Thénardier darted at Marius the triumphant glance of a beaten man who finds that after all he has regained the ground he lost and victory is in sight. But his meek smile promptly returned. Abjectness, the humility of the inferior confronted by his superior, was a better card to play. He merely said:
‘Monsieur le Baron, I think you are mistaken.’
‘What!’ exclaimed Marius. ‘Are you denying what I’ve said? But those are facts!’
‘They are incorrect. Monsieur le Baron has so far honoured me with his confidence that I feel it is my duty to tell him the truth. Truth and justice should come before all else. I do not like to hear a man unjustly accused. Jean Valjean did not rob Monsieur Madeleine, nor did he kill Javert.’
‘How on earth do you make that out?’
‘For two reasons. In the first place he did not rob Monsieur Madeleine because he himself is, or was, Monsieur Madeleine.’
‘What in the world …?’
‘And secondly he did not kill Javert because Javert killed himself. He committed suicide.’
‘What!’ cried Marius, beside himself with amazement. ‘But what proof have you of this?’
‘The police agent Javert,’ said Thénardier, intoning the words as though they were a classical alexandrine, ‘was found drowned under a boat moored near the Pont-au-Change.’
‘Prove it!’
Thénardier fished in an inside pocket and got out a large envelope containing folded papers of different sizes.
‘Here is my dossier,’ he said calmly. He went on: ‘Acting in your interests, Monsieur le Baron, I wished to discover the whole truth about Jean Valjean. When I tell you that he and Madeleine are one and the same, and that Javert was the only murderer of Javert, I can produce evidence to prove it, and not merely handwritten evidence – handwriting can be forged – but printed evidence.’
As he spoke Thénardier was getting copies of two newspapers out of the envelope, both faded and creased and smelling strongly of tobacco, but one of which seemed very much older than the other.
The reader knows of both these newspapers. The older of the two was the issue of the Drapeau Blanc dated 25 July 1823 in which Monsieur Madeleine and Jean Valjean were show
n to be the same person. The more recent, the Moniteur of 15 June 1832, reported the suicide of Javert, adding that it followed Javert’s verbal report to the Prefect of Police that, having been taken prisoner by the insurgents in the Rue de la Chanvrerie, he owed his life to the magnanimity of one of them, who had fired his pistol into the air.
There could be no doubting this evidence. The newspapers were unquestionably authentic. They had not been printed simply to support the testimony of Thénardier. Seeing how mistaken he had been, Marius uttered a cry of joy.
‘Why, but then he’s a splendid man! The fortune was really his! He’s Madeleine, the benefactor of an entire region, and Jean Valjean, the saviour of Javert. He’s a hero! He’s a saint!’
Les Miserables (Movie Tie-in) (9781101612774) Page 141
