LITTLE GAVROCHE.
[CHAPTER I.]
A MALICIOUS TRICK OF THE WIND.
Since 1823, while the public-house at Montfermeil was sinking and gradually being swallowed up, not in the abyss of a bankruptcy, but in the sewer of small debts, the Thénardiers had had two more children, both male. These made five, two daughters and three boys, and they were a good many. The mother had got rid of the latter while still babies by a singular piece of good luck. Got rid of, that is exactly the term, for in this woman there was only a fragment of nature; it is a phenomenon, however, of which there is more than one instance. Like the Maréchale de Lamothe-Houdancourt, the Thénardier was only a mother as far as her daughters, and her maternity ended there. Her hatred of the human race began with her boys; on the side of her sons her cruelty was perpendicular, and her heart had in this respect a dismal steepness. As we have seen, she detested the eldest, and execrated the two others. Why? Because she did. The most terrible of motives and most indisputable of answers is, Because. "I do not want a pack of squalling brats," this mother said.
Let us now explain how the Thénardiers managed to dispose of their last two children, and even make a profit of them. That Magnon, to whom we referred a few pages back, was the same who continued to get an annuity out of old Gillenormand for the two children she had. She lived on the Quai des Célestins, at the corner of that ancient Rue du Petit-Musc, which has done all it could to change its bad reputation into a good odor. Our readers will remember the great croup epidemic, which, thirty-five years ago, desolated the banks of the Seine in Paris, and of which science took advantage to make experiments on a grand scale as to the efficacy of inhaling alum, for which the external application of tincture of iodine has been so usefully substituted in our day. In this epidemic Magnon lost her two boys, still very young, on the same day, one in the morning, the other in the evening. It was a blow, for these children were precious to their mother, as they represented eighty francs a month. These eighty francs were very punctually paid by the receiver of M. Gillenormand's rents, a M. Barge, a retired bailiff who lived in the Rue de Sicile. When the children were dead the annuity was buried, and so Magnon sought an expedient. In the dark free-masonry of evil of which she formed part everything is known, secrets are kept, and people help each other. Magnon wanted two children, and Madame Thénardier had two of the same size and age; it was a good arrangement for one, and an excellent investment for the other. The little Thénardiers became the little Magnons, and Magnon left the Quai des Célestins, and went to live in the Rue Cloche-Perce. In Paris the identity which attaches an individual to himself is broken by moving from one street to the others. The authorities, not being warned by anything, made no objections, and the substitution was effected in the simplest way in the world. Thénardier, however, demanded for this loan of children ten francs a month, which Magnon promised, and even paid. We need not say that M. Gillenormand continued to sacrifice himself, and went every six months to see the children. He did not notice the change. "Oh, sir," Magnon would say to him, "how like you they are, to be sure."
Thénardier, to whom avatars were an easy task, seized this opportunity to become Jondrette. His two daughters and Gavroche had scarcely had time to perceive that they had two little brothers; for in a certain stage of misery people are affected by a sort of spectral indifference, and regard human beings as ghosts. Your nearest relatives are often to you no more than vague forms of the shadow, hardly to be distinguished from the nebulous back-ground of life, and which easily become blended again with the invisible. On the evening of the day when Mother Thénardier handed over her two babes to Magnon, with the well-expressed will of renouncing them forever, she felt, or pretended to feel, a scruple, and said to her husband, "Why, that is deserting one's children!" But Thénardier, magisterial and phlegmatic, cauterized the scruple with this remark, "Jean Jacques Rousseau did better." From scruple the mother passed to anxiety: "But suppose the police were to trouble us? Tell me, Monsieur Thénardier, whether what we have done is permitted?" Thénardier replied: "Everything is permitted. Nobody will see through it out of the blue. Besides, no one has any interest in inquiring closely after children that have not a sou." Magnon was a sort of she-dandy in crime, and dressed handsomely. She shared her rooms, which were furnished in a conventional and miserable way, with a very clever Gallicized English thief. This Englishwoman, a naturalized Parisian, respectable through her powerful and rich connections, who was closely connected with medals of the library and the diamonds of Mademoiselle Mars, was at a later date celebrated in the annals of crime. She was called "Mamselle Miss." The two little ones who had fallen into Magnon's clutches had no cause to complain; recommended by the eighty francs, they were taken care of, like everything which brings in a profit. They were not badly clothed, not badly fed, treated almost like "little gentlemen," and better off with their false mother than the true one. Magnon acted the lady, and never talked slang in their presence. They spent several years there, and Thénardier augured well of it. One day he happened to say to Magnon as she handed him the monthly ten francs, "The 'father' must give them an education."
All at once these two poor little creatures, hitherto tolerably well protected, even by their evil destiny, were suddenly hurled into life, and forced to begin it. An arrest of criminals en masse, like that in the Jondrette garret, being necessarily complicated with researches and ulterior incarcerations, is a veritable disaster for that hideous and occult counter-society which lives beneath public society; and an adventure of this nature produces all sorts of convulsions in this gloomy world. The catastrophe of the Thénardiers was the catastrophe of Magnon. One day, a little while after Magnon had given Éponine the note relating to the Rue Plumet, the police made a sudden descent on the Rue Cloche-Perce. Magnon was arrested, as was Mamselle Miss, and all the inhabitants of the house which were suspected were caught in the haul. The two little boys were playing at the time in the back-yard, and saw nothing of the raid; but when they tried to go in they found the door locked and the house empty. A cobbler whose stall was opposite called to them and gave them a paper which "their mother" had left for them. On the paper was this address, "M. Barge, receiver of rents, No. 8, Rue du Roi de Sicile." The cobbler said to them: "You no longer live here. Go there, it is close by, the first street on your left. Ask your way with that paper." The boys set off, the elder leading the younger, and holding in his hand the paper which was to serve as their guide. It was cold, and his little numbed fingers held the paper badly, and at the corner of a lane a puff of wind tore it from him; and as it was night the boy could not find it again. They began wandering about the streets haphazard.
[CHAPTER II.]
GAVROCHE REAPS ADVANTAGE FROM NAPOLEON THE GREAT.
Spring in Paris is very frequently traversed by sharp, violent breezes which, if they do not freeze, chill. These breezes, which sadden the brightest days, produce exactly the same effect as the blasts of cold wind which enter a warm room through the crevices of a badly closed door or window. It seems as if the gloomy gate of winter has been left ajar, and that the wind comes from there. In the spring of 1832, the period when the first great epidemic of this century broke out in Europe, these breezes were sharper and more cutting than ever, and some door even more icy than that of winter had been left ajar. It was the door of the sepulchre, and the breath of cholera could be felt in these breezes. From a meteorological point of view these cold winds had the peculiarity that they did not exclude a powerful electric tension. Frequent storms, accompanied by thunder and lightning, broke out at this period.
One evening, when these breezes were blowing sharply, so sharply that January seemed to have returned, and the citizens had put on their cloaks again, little Gavroche, still shivering gayly under his rags, was standing as if in ecstasy in front of a hair-dresser's shop in the vicinity of the Orme-Saint Gervais. He was adorned with a woman's woollen shawl, picked up no one knew where, of which he had made a muffler. Little Gavroche appeared to be lost in admiration of a waxen image of a bride, wearing a very low-necked dress, and a wreath of orange-flowers in her hair, which revolved between two lamps, and lavished its smiles on the passers-by; but in reality he was watching the shop to see whether he could not "prig" a cake of soap, which he would afterwards sell for a sou to a barber in the suburbs. He frequently breakfasted on one of these cakes, and he called this style of work, for which he had a talent, "shaving the barbers." While regarding the bride, and casting sheep's eyes on the cake of soap, he growled between his teeth: "Tuesday: this is not Tuesday. Is it Tuesday? Perhaps it is Tuesday; yes, it is Tuesday." What this soliloquy referred to was never known; but if it was to the last time he had dined, it was three days ago, for the present day was a Friday. The barber, in his shop warmed with a good stove, was shaving a customer and taking every now and then a side-glance at this enemy,—this shivering and impudent gamin who had his two hands in his pockets, but his mind evidently elsewhere.
While Gavroche was examining the bride, the window, and the Windsor soap, two boys of unequal height, very decently dressed, and younger than himself, one apparently seven, the other five years of age, timidly turned the handle and entered the shop, asking for something, charity possibly, in a plaintive murmur which was more like a sob than a prayer. They both spoke together, and their words were unintelligible, because sobs choked the voice of the younger boy, and cold made the teeth of the elder rattle. The barber turned with a furious face, and without laying down his razor drove the older boy into the street with his left hand, and the little one with his knee, and closed the door again, saying,—
"To come and chill people for nothing!"
The two lads set out again, crying. A cloud had come up in the mean while, and it began raining, little Gavroche ran up to them, and accosted them thus,—
"What's the matter with you, brats?"
"We don't know where to sleep," the elder replied.
"Is that all?" said Gavroche; "that's a great thing. Is that anything to cry about, simpletons?" And assuming an accent of tender affection and gentle protection, which was visible through his somewhat pompous superiority, he said,—
"Come with me, kids."
"Yes, sir," said the elder boy.
And the two children followed him as they would have done an archbishop, and left off crying. Gavroche led them along the Rue St. Antoine, in the direction of the Bastille, and while going off took an indignant and retrospective glance at the barber's shop.
"That whiting has no heart," he growled; "he's an Englishman."
A girl, seeing the three walking in file, Gavroche at the head, burst into a loud laugh. This laugh was disrespectful to the party.
"Good day, Mamselle Omnibus," Gavroche said to her.
A moment after the hair-dresser returning to his mind, he added,—
"I made a mistake about the brute; he is not a whiting, but a snake. Barber, I'll go and fetch a locksmith, and order him to put a bell on your tail."
This barber had made him aggressive; as he stepped across a gutter, he addressed a bearded portress, worthy to meet Faust on the Brocken, and who was holding her broom in her hand,—
"Madame," he said to her, "I see that you go out with your horse."
And after this he plashed the varnished boots of a passer-by.
"Scoundrel!" the gentleman said furiously. Gavroche raised his nose out of the shawl.
"Have you a complaint to make, sir?"
"Yes, of you," said the gentleman.
"The office is closed," Gavroche remarked. "I don't receive any more complaints to-day."
As he went along the street he noticed a girl of thirteen or fourteen, shivering in a gateway, in such short petticoats that she showed her knees. But the little girl was beginning to get too tall a girl for that. Growth plays you such tricks, and the petticoat begins to become short when nudity grows indecent.
"Poor girl," said Gavroche, "she hasn't even a pair of breeches. Here, collar this."
And taking off all the good wool which he had round his neck he threw it over the thin violet shoulders of the beggar-girl, when the muffler became once again a shawl. The little girl looked at him with an astonished air, and received the shawl in silence. At a certain stage of distress a poor man in his stupor no longer groans at evil, and gives no thanks for kindness. This done,—
"B-r-r!" said Gavroche, colder than Saint Martin, who, at any rate, retained one half his cloak. On hearing this "Brr," the shower, redoubling its passion, poured down; those wicked skies punish good actions.
"Hilloh!" Gavroche shouted, "what's the meaning of this? It is raining again. Bon Dieu! if this goes on, I shall withdraw my subscription."
And he set out again.
"No matter," he said as he took a glance at the beggar-girl crouching under her shawl, "she's got a first-rate skin."
And, looking at the clouds, he cried,—"Sold you are!"
The two children limped after him, and as they passed one of those thick close gratings which indicate a baker's, for bread, like gold, is placed behind a grating, Gavroche turned round.
"By the bye, brats, have you dined?"
"We have had nothing to eat, sir, since early this morning," the elder answered.
"Then you haven't either father or mother?" Gavroche continued magisterially.
"I beg your pardon, sir; we have a pa and a ma, but we don't know where they are."
"Sometimes that is better than knowing," said Gavroche, who was a philosopher in his small way.
"We have been walking about for two hours," the lad continued, "and looked for things at the corners of the streets, but found nothing."
"I know," said Gavroche; "the dogs eat everything."
He resumed after a pause,—
"And so we have lost our authors. We don't know what we have done with them. That isn't right, gamins. It is foolish to mislay grown-up people. Well, one must swig, for all that."
He did not ask them any more questions, for what could be more simple than to have no domicile? The elder of the boys, who had almost entirely recovered the happy carelessness of childhood, made this remark: "It is funny all the same. Mamma said she would take us to look for blessed box, on Palm Sunday. Mamma is a lady who lives with Mamselle Miss."
"Tanflute!" added Gavroche.
He stopped, and for some minutes searched all sorts of corners which he had in his rags: at length he raised his head with an air which only wished to represent satisfaction, but which was in reality triumphant,—
"Calm yourselves, kids; here is supper for three."
And he drew a sou from one of his pockets; without giving the lads time to feel amazed, he pushed them both before him into the baker's shop, and laid his sou on the counter, exclaiming,—
"Garçon, five centimes' worth of bread."
The baker, who was the master in person, took up a loaf and a knife.
"In three pieces, garçon," remarked Gavroche, and he added with dignity,—
"We are three."
And seeing that the baker, after examining the three suppers, had taken a loaf of black bread, he thrust his finger into his nose, with as imperious a sniff as if he had the great Frederick's pinch of snuff on his thumb, and cast in the baker's face this indignant remark,—
"Keksekça?"
Those of our readers who might be tempted to see in this remark of Gavroche's to the baker a Russian or Polish word, or one of the savage cries which the Ioways or the Botocudos hurl at each other across the deserted streams, are warned that this is a word which they (our readers) employ daily, and which signifies, qu'est ce que c'est que cela? The baker perfectly comprehended, and replied,—
"Why, it is bread, very good seconds bread."
"You mean black bread," Gavroche remarked, with a calm and cold disdain. "White bread, my lad; I stand treat."
The baker could not refrain from smiling, and while cutting some white bread gazed at them in a compassionate way which offended Gavroche.
"Well, baker's man," he said, "what is there about us that you measure us in that way?"
When the bread was cut, the baker put the sou in the till, and Gavroche said to the two boys,—
"Grub away."
The boys looked at him in surprise, and Gavroche burst into a laugh.
"Oh, yes, that's true, they don't understand yet, they are so little."
And he continued, "Eat."
At the same time he gave each of them a lump of bread. Thinking that the elder, who appeared to him more worthy of his conversation, merited some special encouragement, and ought to have any hesitation about satisfying his hunger removed, he added, as he gave him the larger lump,—
"Shove that into your gun."
There was one piece smaller than the two others, and he took that for himself. The poor boys, Gavroche included, were starving; while tearing the bread with their teeth, they blocked up the baker's shop, who, now that he was paid, looked at them angrily.
"Let us return to the street," said Gavroche.
They started again in the direction of the Bastille; and from time to time as they passed lighted shops, the younger boy stopped to see what o'clock it was by a leaden watch hung round his neck by a string.
"Well, he is a great fool," said Gavroche.
Then he thoughtfully growled between his teeth, "No matter, if I had kids of my own I would take more care of them than that."
As they were finishing their bread, they reached the corner of that gloomy Rue de Ballet at the end of which the low and hostile wicket of La Force is visible.
"Hilloh, is that you, Gavroche?" some one said.
"Hilloh, is that you, Montparnasse?" said Gavroche.
It was a man who accosted Gavroche, no other than Montparnasse disguised with blue spectacles, but Gavroche was able to recognize him.
"My eye!" Gavroche went on, "you have a skin of the color of a linseed poultice and blue spectacles like a doctor. That's your style, on the word of an old man!"
"Silence," said Montparnasse, "not so loud;" and he quickly dragged Gavroche out of the light of the shops. The two little boys followed mechanically, holding each other by the hand. When they were under the black arch of a gateway, protected from eyes and rain, Montparnasse remarked,
"Do you know where I am going?"
"To the abbey of Go-up-with-regret" (the scaffold), said Gavroche.
"Joker!"
And Montparnasse added,—
"I am going to meet Babet."
"Ah!" said Gavroche, "her name is Babet, is it?"
Montparnasse lowered his voice,—
"It is not a she, but a he."
"I thought he was buckled up."
"He has unfastened the buckle," Montparnasse replied.
And he hurriedly told the boy that on that very morning Babet, while being removed to the Conciergerie, escaped by turning to the left instead of the right in the "police-office passage."
Gavroche admired his skill.
"What a dentist!" said he.
Montparnasse added a few details about Babet's escape, and ended with, "Oh, that is not all."
Gavroche, while talking, had seized a cane which Montparnasse held in his hand; he mechanically pulled at the upper part, and a dagger blade became visible.
"Ah!" he said as he quickly thrust it back, "you have brought your gendarme with you disguised as a civilian."
Montparnasse winked.
"The deuce!" Gavroche continued, "are you going to have a turn-up with the slops?"
"There's no knowing," Montparnasse answered carelessly; "it's always as well to have a pin about you."
Gavroche pressed him.
"What are you going to do to-night?"
Montparnasse again became serious, and said, mincing his words,—
"Some things."
And he suddenly changed the conversation.
"By the bye—"
"What?"
"Something that happened the other day. Just fancy. I meet a bourgeois, and he makes me a present of a sermon, and a purse. I put it in my pocket, a moment later I feel for it, and there was nothing there."
"Only the sermon," said Gavroche.
"But where are you going now?" Montparnasse continued.
Gavroche pointed to his two protégés, and said,—
"I am going to put these two children to bed."
"Where?"
"At my house."
"Have you a lodging?"
"Yes."
"Where?"
"Inside the elephant," said Gavroche.
Montparnasse, though naturally not easy to astonish, could not refrain from the exclamation,—
"Inside the elephant?"
"Well, yes, kekçaa?"
This is another word belonging to the language which nobody reads and everybody speaks; kekçaa signifies, qu'est-ce-que cela a? The gamin's profound remark brought Montparnasse back to calmness and good sense: he seemed to entertain a better opinion of Gavroche's lodgings.
"Ah, yes," he said, "the 'elephant.' Are you comfortable there?"
"Very," Gavroche replied. "Most comfortable. There are no draughts as there are under the bridges."
"How do you get in? Is there a hole?"
"Of course there is, but you have no need to mention it; it's between the front legs, and the police-spies don't know it."
"And you climb in? yes, I understand."
"A turn of the hand, cric crac, it's done; and there's no one to be seen."
After a pause Gavroche added,—
"I shall have a ladder for these young ones."
Montparnasse burst into a laugh.
"Where the devil did you pick up those kids?"
"A barber made me a present of them."
In the mean while Montparnasse had become pensive.
"You recognized me very easily," he said.
He took from his pocket two small objects, which were quills wrapped in cotton, and thrust one into each nostril; they made him quite a different nose.
"That changes you," said Gavroche; "you are not so ugly now, and you ought to keep them in for good."
Montparnasse was a handsome fellow, but Gavroche was fond of a joke.
"Without any humbug," Montparnasse asked; "what do you think of me now?"
It was also a different sound of voice; in a second Montparnasse had become unrecognizable.
"Oh! play Porrichinelle for us!" Gavroche exclaimed.
The two lads, who had heard nothing up to this moment, engaged as they were themselves in thrusting their fingers up their noses, drew nearer on hearing this name, and gazed at Montparnasse with a beginning of joy and admiration. Unhappily Montparnasse was in no humor for jesting; he laid his hand on Gavroche's shoulder, and said, with a stress on each word,—
"Listen to what I tell you, boy; if I were on the spot, with my dog, my knife, and my wife, and you were to offer me ten double sous I would not refuse to work, but we are not at Mardi Gras."[1]
This strange sentence produced a singular effect on the gamin; he turned around sharply, looked with his little bright eyes all around, and noticed a few yards off a policeman with his back turned to them. Gavroche let an "all-right" slip from him, which he at once repressed, and shook Montparnasse's hand.
"Well, good-night," he said; "I am off to my elephant with my brats. Should you happen to want me any night you'll find me there. I lodge in the entresol, and there's no porter; ask for Monsieur Gavroche."
"All right," said Montparnasse.
And they parted, Montparnasse going toward the Grève, and Gavroche toward the Bastille. The youngest boy, dragged on by his brother, whom Gavroche dragged along in his turn, looked round several times to watch "Porrichinelle" go away.
The enigmatical sentence by which Montparnasse informed Gavroche of the presence of the policeman contained no other talisman but the sound dig repeated five or six times under various forms. This syllable, not pronounced separately, but artistically mingled with the words of a sentence, means, "Take care, we cannot speak freely." There was also in Montparnasse's remark a literary beauty which escaped Gavroche's notice, that is, mon dogue, ma dague, et ma digue,—a phrase of the Temple slang greatly in use among the merry-andrews and queues rouges of the great age in which Molière wrote and Callot designed.
Twenty years back there might have been seen in the southeastern corner of the square of the Bastille near the canal dock, dug in the old moat of the citadel-prison, a quaint monument, which has already been effaced from the memory of Parisians, and which should have left some trace, as it was an idea of the "Member of the Institute, Commander-in-Chief of the army of Egypt." We say monument, though it was only a plaster cast; but this cast itself, a prodigious sketch, the grand corpse of a Napoleonic idea which two or three successive puffs of wind carried away each time farther from us, had become historic, and assumed something definitive, which formed a contrast with its temporary appearance. It was an elephant, forty feet high, constructed of carpentry and masonry, bearing on its back a castle which resembled a house, once painted green by some plasterer, and now painted black by the heavens, the rain, and time. In this deserted and uncovered corner of the square the wide forehead of the colossus, its trunk, its tusks, its castle, its enormous back, and its four feet like columns, produced at night upon the starlit sky a surprising and terrible outline. No one knew what it meant, and it seemed a sort of symbol of the popular strength. It was gloomy, enigmatical, and immense; it looked like a powerful phantom visible and erect by the side of the invisible spectre of the Bastille. Few strangers visited this edifice, and no passer-by looked at it. It was falling in ruins, and each season plaster becoming detached from its flanks, made horrible wounds upon it. The "Édiles," as they were called in the fashionable slang, had forgotten it since 1814. It stood there in its corner, gloomy, sickly, crumbling away, surrounded by rotting palings, which were sullied every moment by drunken drivers. There were yawning cracks in its stomach, a lath issued from its tail, and tall grass grew between its legs; and as the level of the square had risen during the last thirty years through that slow and continuous movement which insensibly elevates the soil of great cities, it was in a hollow, and it seemed as if the earth were giving way beneath it. It was unclean, despised, repulsive, and superb; ugly in the eyes of cits, but melancholy in the eyes of the thinker. It had something about it of the ordure which is swept away, and something of the majesty which is decapitated.
As we said, at night its appearance changed; for night is the real medium of everything which is shadow. So soon as twilight set in the old elephant was transfigured; and it assumed a placid and redoubtable appearance in the formidable serenity of the darkness. As it belonged to the past it belonged to night, and this obscurity suited its grandeur. This monument, rude, broad, heavy, rough, austere, and almost shapeless, but most assuredly majestic, and imprinted with a species of magnificent and savage gravity, has disappeared to allow the sort of gigantic stove adorned with its pipe to reign in peace, which was substituted for the frowning fortalice with its nine towers much in the same way as the bourgeoisie are substituted for feudalism. It is very simple that a stove should be the symbol of an epoch in which a copper contains the power. This period will pass away; it is already passing away. People are beginning to understand that if there may be strength in a boiler there can only be power in a brain; in other words, that what leads and carries away the world is not locomotives, but ideas. Attach locomotives to ideas, and then it is all right; but do not take the horse for the rider.
However this may be, to return to the Bastille square, the architect of the elephant managed to produce something grand with plaster, while the architect of the stove-pipe has succeeded in making something little out of bronze. This stove-pipe, which was christened a sonorous name and called the Column of July, this spoiled monument of an abortive revolution, was still wrapped up, in 1832, in an immense sheet of carpentry-work,—which we regret for our part,—and a vast enclosure of planks, which completed the isolation of the elephant. It was to this corner of this square, which was scarce lighted by the reflection of a distant oil-lamp, that the gamin led the two urchins.
(Allow us to interrupt our narrative here, and remind our readers that we are recording the simple truth; and that twenty years ago a boy, who was caught sleeping in the inside of the elephant of the Bastille, was brought before the police on the charge of vagabondage and breaking a public monument.)
On coming near the colossus, Gavroche understood the effect which the infinitely great may produce on the infinitely little, and said,—
"Don't be frightened, brats."
Then he went through a hole in the palings into the ground round the elephant, and helped the children to pass through the breach. The lads, a little frightened, followed Gavroche without a word, and confided in this little Providence in rags who had given them bread and promised them a bed. A ladder, employed by workmen at the column by day, was lying along the palings; Gavroche raised it with singular vigor, and placed it against one of the elephant's fore legs. At the point where the ladder ended, a sort of black hole could be distinguished in the belly of the colossus. Gavroche pointed out the ladder and the hole to his guests, and said, "Go up, and go in." The two little boys looked at each other in terror.
"You are frightened, kids!" Gavroche exclaimed, and added, "you shall see."
He clung round the elephant's wrinkled foot, and in a twinkling, without deigning to employ the ladder, he reached the hole. He went in like a lizard gliding into a crevice, and a moment after the boys saw his head vaguely appear, like a white livid form, on the edge of the hole, which was full of darkness.
"Well," he cried, "come up, my blessed babes. You will see how snug it is. Come up, you," he said to the elder. "I will hold your hand."
The little boys nudged each other, for the gamin at once frightened and reassured them; and then it was raining very hard. The elder boy ventured, and the younger, on seeing his brother ascending and himself left alone between the feet of this great beast, felt greatly inclined to cry, but did not dare. The elder climbed up the rungs of the ladder in a very tottering way, and as he did so Gavroche encouraged him by exclamations of a fencing-master to his pupils, or of a muleteer to his mules.
"Don't be frightened! That is it—keep on moving; set your foot there; now, your hand here—bravo!"
And when he was within reach he quickly and powerfully seized him by the arm, and drew him to him.
"Swallowed!" he said.
The boy had passed through the crevice.
"Now," said Gavroche, "wait for me. Pray sit down, sir."
And leaving the hole in the same way as he had entered it, he slid down the elephant's leg with the agility of a monkey, fell on his feet in the grass, seized the youngest boy round the waist and planted him on the middle of the ladder; then he began ascending behind him, shouting to the elder boy,—
"I'll push him and you'll pull him."
In a second the little fellow was pushed up, dragged, pulled, and drawn through the hole before he knew where he was; and Gavroche, entering after him, kicked away the ladder, which fell in the grass, and clapped his hands as he shouted, "There we are! Long live General Lafayette!" This explosion over, he added, "Brats, you are in my house."
Gavroche was, in fact, at home. Oh, unexpected utility of the useless! Oh, charity of great things! Oh, goodness of the giants! This huge monument, which had contained a thought of the Emperor, had become the lodging of a gamin. The brat had been accepted and sheltered by the colossus. The cits in their Sunday clothes who passed by the elephant of the Bastille were prone to say, as they measured it with a contemptuous look from the eyes flush with their head, Of what service is that? It served to save from cold, from frost, from damp and rain; to protect from the winter wind; to preserve from sleeping in the mud, which entails fever, and from sleeping in the snow, which causes death, a little fatherless and motherless boy without bread, clothes, or shelter. It served to shelter the innocent boy whom society repulsed. It served to diminish the public wrong. It was a lair opened to him against whom all doors were closed. It seemed as if the old wretched mastodon, attacked by vermin and oblivion, covered with warts, mould, and ulcers, tottering, crumbling, abandoned, and condemned,—a species of colossal mendicant asking in vain the alms of a benevolent glance in the midst of the highway,—had taken pity on this other beggar, the poor pygmy who walked about without shoes on his feet, without a ceiling over his head, blowing his fingers, dressed in rags, and supporting life on what was thrown away. This is of what use the elephant of the Bastille was; and this idea of Napoleon, disdained by men, had been taken up again by God. What had only been illustrious had become august. The Emperor would have needed, in order to realize what he meditated, porphyry, bronze, iron, gold, and marble; but for God the old collection of planks, beams, and plaster was sufficient. The Emperor had had a dream of genius. In this Titanic elephant, armed, prodigious, raising its trunk, and spouting all around glad and living waters, he wished to incarnate the people; and God had made a greater thing of it, for He lodged a child in it.
The hole by which Gavroche entered was a breach scarce visible from the outside, as it was concealed, as we said, under the elephant's belly, and so narrow that only cats and boys could pass through it.
"Let us begin," said Gavroche, "by telling the porter that we are not at home."
And plunging into the darkness with certainty like a man who knows every corner of the room, he took a plank and stopped up the hole. Gavroche plunged again into the darkness; the children heard the fizzing of a match dipped into the bottle of phosphorus,—for lucifer matches did not yet exist, and the Fumade fire-producer represented progress at that day. A sudden light made them wink. Gavroche had lit one of those bits of string dipped in pitch which are called "cellar rats;" and this thing, which smoked more than it illumined, rendered the inside of the elephant indistinctly visible. Gavroche's two guests looked around them, and had much such a feeling as any one would have if shut up in the Heidelberg tun, or, better still, what Jonas must have experienced in the biblical belly of the whale. An entire gigantic skeleton was visible to them and enveloped them; above their heads a long brown beam, from which sprang at regular distances massive cross-bars, represented the spine with the ribs; stalactites of plaster hung down like viscera, and vast spider webs formed from one side to the other dusty diaphragms. Here and there in corners could be seen large black spots which seemed alive, and changed places rapidly with a quick and startled movement. The pieces which had fallen from the elephant's back on its belly had filled up the concavity, so that it was possible to walk on it as on a flooring. The youngest lad nudged his brother and said,—
"It is black."
This remark made Gavroche cry out, for the petrified air of the two lads rendered a check necessary.
"What's that you give me?" he shouted; "do you gab? You have dislikes, eh! I suppose you want the Tuileries? Are you brutes? Tell me, but I warn you that I do not belong to the regiment of spoonies. Well, to hear you talk one would think that your father was a prince of the blood."
A little roughness is good in terror, for it reassures; the two children drew nearer to Gavroche, who, affected paternally by this confidence, passed from sternness to gentleness, and addressing the younger lad,—
"Blockhead," he said, toning down the insult with a caressing inflection of the voice, "it is outside that it's black. Outside it rains, and here it does not rain; outside it is cold, and here there is not a breath of wind; outside there is a heap of people, and here there's nobody; outside there's not even the moon, and here there's a candle, the deuce take it all!"
The two lads began looking round the apartment with less terror, but Gavroche did not allow them any leisure for contemplation.
"Quick," he said.
And he thrust them toward what we are very happy to call the end of the room, where his bed was. Gavroche's bed was perfect, that is to say, there was a mattress, a coverlet, and an alcove with curtains. The mattress was a straw mat, and the coverlet was a rather wide wrapper of coarse gray wool, very warm, and nearly new. This is what the alcove was,—three long props were driven securely into the plaster soil, that is to say, the elephant's belly, two in front and one behind, and were fastened by a cord at the top, so as to form a hollow pyramid. These props supported a grating of brass wire, simply laid upon them, but artistically fastened with iron wire, so that it entirely surrounded the three poles. A row of large stones fastened the lattice-work down to the ground, so that nothing could pass; and this lattice was merely a piece of the brass-work put up in aviaries in menageries. Gavroche's bed was under the wire-work as in a cage, and the whole resembled an Esquimaux's tent. Gavroche moved a few of the stones that held down the lattice-work in front, and shouted to the lads,—
"Now then, on all fours."
He made his guests enter the cage cautiously, then went in after them, brought the stones together again, and hermetically closed the opening. They lay down all three on the mat, and though they were all so short, not one of them could stand upright in the alcove. Gavroche still held the "cellar rat" in his hand.
"Now," he said, "to roost; I am going to suppress the chandelier."
"What is that, sir?" the elder of the lads asked Gavroche, pointing to the brass grating.
"That," said Gavroche, gravely, "is on account of the rats. Go to roost!"
Still he thought himself obliged to add a few words of instruction for these young creatures, and continued,—
"It comes from the Jardin des Plantes, and is employed to guard ferocious animals. There is a whole store-house full; you have only to climb over a wall, crawl through a window, and pass under a door, and you can have as much as you like."
While speaking he wrapped up the little boy in the blanket, who murmured,—
"Oh, that is nice, it's so warm!"
Gavroche took a glance of satisfaction at the coverlet.
"That also comes from the Jardin des Plantes," he said, "I took it from the monkeys."
And pointing out to the elder one the straw mat on which he was lying, which was very thick and admirably made, he added,—
"That belonged to the giraffe."
After a pause he continued,—
"The beasts had all those things, and I took them from them; they were not at all angry, for I told them that I wanted them for the elephant."
There was another interval of silence, after which he continued, "You climb over walls and snap your fingers at the Government."
The two lads gazed with a timid and stupefied respect at this intrepid and inventive being, a vagabond like them, isolated like them, weak like them, who had something admirable and omnipotent about him, who appeared to them supernatural, and whose face was composed of all the grimaces of an old mountebank, mingled with the simplest and most charming smile.
"Then, sir," the elder lad said timidly, "you are not afraid of the policemen?"
Gavroche limited himself to answering,—
"Brat! we don't say 'policemen,' we say 'slops.'"
The younger had his eyes wide open, but said nothing; as he was at the edge of the mat, the elder being in the centre, Gavroche tucked in the coverlet around him as a mother would have done, and raised the mat under his head with old rags, so as to make him a pillow. Then he turned to the elder boy,—
"Well! it is jolly here, eh?"
"Oh, yes!" the lad answered, as he looked at Gavroche with the expression of a saved angel.
The two poor little fellows, who were wet through, began to grow warm again.
"By the bye," Gavroche went on, "why were you blubbering?"
And pointing to the younger boy he said to his brother,—
"A baby like that, I don't say no; but for a tall chap like you to cry is idiotic, you look like a calf."
"Well, sir," the lad said, "we hadn't any lodging to go to."
"Brat," Gavroche remarked, "we don't say 'lodging,' but 'crib.'"
"And then we felt afraid of being all alone like that in the night."
"We don't say 'night,' but 'sorgue.'"
"Thank you, sir," said the boy.
"Listen to me," Gavroche went on. "You must never blubber for anything. I'll take care of you, and you'll see what fun we shall have. In summer we'll go to the Glacière with Navet, a pal of mine; we'll bathe in the dock, and run about naked on the timber floats in front of the bridge of Austerlitz, for that makes the washerwomen rage. They yell, they kick, and, Lord! if you only knew how ridiculous they are! We'll go and see the skeleton man; he's alive at the Champs Élysées, and the cove is as thin as blazes. And then I will take you to the play, and let you see Frederick Lemaître; I get tickets, for I know some actors, and even performed myself once in a piece. We were a lot of boys who ran about under a canvas, and that made the sea. I will get you an engagement at my theatre. We will go and see the savages, but they ain't real savages, they wear pink fleshing which forms creases, and you can see repairs made at their elbows with white thread. After that we will go to the Opera, and enter with the claquers. The claque at the Opera is very well selected, though I wouldn't care to be seen with the claque on the boulevard. At the Opera, just fancy, they're people who pay their twenty sous, but they are asses, and we call them dish-clouts. And then we will go and see a man guillotined, and I'll point out the executioner to you, Monsieur Sanson; he lives in the Rue de Marais, and he's got a letter-box at his door. Ah! we shall amuse ourselves famously."
At this moment a drop of pitch fell on Gavroche's hand, and recalled him to the realities of life.
"The devil," he said, "the match is wearing out. Pay attention! I can't afford more than a sou a month for lighting, and when people go to bed they are expected to sleep. We haven't the time to read M. Paul de Kock's romances. Besides, the light might pass through the crevices of the gate, and the slops might see it."
"And then," timidly observed the elder lad, who alone dared to speak to Gavroche and answer him, "a spark might fall on the straw, and we must be careful not to set the house on fire."
"You mustn't say 'set the house on fire,'" Gavroche remarked, "but 'blaze the crib.'"
The storm grew more furious, and through the thunder-peals the rain could be heard pattering on the back of the colossus.
"The rain's sold!" said Gavroche. "I like to hear the contents of the water-bottle running down the legs of the house. Winter's an ass; it loses its time, it loses its trouble; it can't drown us, and so that is the reason why the old water-carrier is so growling with us."
This allusion to the thunder, whose consequences Gavroche, in his quality as a nineteenth-century philosopher, accepted, was followed by a lengthened flash, so dazzling that a portion of it passed through the hole in the elephant's belly. Almost at the same moment the thunder roared, and very furiously. The two little boys uttered a cry, and rose so quickly that the brass grating was almost thrown down; but Gavroche turned toward them his bold face, and profited by the thunder-clap to burst into a laugh.
"Be calm, children, and do not upset the edifice. That's fine thunder of the right sort, and it isn't like that humbugging lightning. It's almost as fine as at the 'Ambigu.'"
This said, he restored order in the grating, softly pushed the two lads on to the bed, pressed their knees to make them lie full length, and cried,—
"Since le Bon Dieu is lighting his candle, I can put out mine. Children, my young humans, we must sleep, for it's very bad not to sleep. It makes you stink in the throat, as people say in fashionable society. Wrap yourselves well up in the blanket, for I am going to put the light out; are you all right?"
"Yes," said the elder boy, "I'm all right, and feel as if I had a feather pillow under my head."
"You mustn't say 'head,'" Gavroche cried, "but 'nut.'"
The two lads crept close together; Gavroche made them all right on the mat, and pulled the blanket up to their ears; then he repeated for the third time in the hieratic language, "Roost."
And he blew out the rope's end. The light was scarce extinguished ere a singular trembling began to shake the trellis-work under which the three children were lying. It was a multitude of dull rubbings which produced a metallic sound, as if claws and teeth were assailing the copper wire, and this was accompanied by all sorts of little shrill cries. The little boy of five years of age, hearing this noise above his head, and chilled with terror, nudged his elder brother, but he was "roosting" already, as Gavroche had ordered him; then the little one, unable to hold out any longer for fright, dared to address Gavroche, but in a very low voice and holding his breath.
"Sir?"
"Hilloh!" said Gavroche, who had just closed his eyes.
"What is that?"
"It's the rats," Gavroche answered.
And he laid his head again on the mat. The rats, which were really by thousands in the elephant's carcass, and were the live black spots to which we have alluded, had been held in check by the flame of the link so long as it was alight; but as soon as this cavern, which was, so to speak, their city, had been restored to night, sniffing what that famous story-teller, Perrault, calls "fresh meat," they rushed in bands to Gavroche's tent, climbed to the top, and were biting the meshes, as if trying to enter this novel sort of trap. In the mean while the little one did not sleep.
"Sir?" he began again.
"Well?" Gavroche asked.
"What are rats?"
"They're mice."
This explanation slightly reassured the child, for he had seen white mice in his life, and had not been afraid of them; still, he raised his voice again.
"Sir?"
"Well?" Gavroche repeated.
"Why don't you keep a cat?"
"I had one," Gavroche answered; "I brought it here, but they ate it for me."
This second explanation undid the work of the first, and the child began trembling once more; the dialogue between him and Gavroche was resumed for the fourth time.
"Sir?"
"Well?"
"What was eaten?"
"The cat."
"What ate the cat?"
"The rats."
"The mice?"
"Yes, the rats."
The child, terrified by these mice which ate the cats, continued,—
"Would those mice eat us?"
"Oh, Lord, yes!" Gavroche said.
The child's terror was at its height, but Gavroche added,—
"Don't be frightened, they cant get in. And then, I am here. Stay; take my hand, hold your tongue, and sleep."
Gavroche at the same time took the boy's hand across his brother, and the child pressed the hand against his body and felt reassured; for courage and strength have mysterious communications. Silence had set in again around them, the sound of voices had startled and driven away the rats; and when they returned a few minutes later and furiously attacked, the three boys, plunged in sleep, heard nothing more. The night hours passed away; darkness covered the immense Bastille Square. A winter wind, which was mingled with the rain, blew in gusts. The patrols examined doors, enclosures, and dark corners, and, while searching for nocturnal vagabonds, passed silently before the elephant; the monster, erect and motionless, with its eyes open in the darkness, seemed to be dreaming, as if satisfied at its good deed, and sheltered from the sky and rain the three poor sleeping children. In order to understand what is going to follow, it must be remembered that at this period the main-guard of the Bastille was situated at the other end of the square, and that what took place near the elephant could neither be prevented nor heard by the sentry. Toward the end of the hour which immediately precedes daybreak, a man came running out of the Rue St. Antoine, crossed the square, went round the great enclosure of the Column of July, and slipped through the palings under the elephant's belly. If any light had fallen on this man, it might have been guessed from his thoroughly drenched state that he had passed the night in the rain. On getting under the elephant he uttered a peculiar cry, which belongs to no human language, and which a parrot alone could reproduce. He repeated twice this cry, of which the following orthography scarce supplies any idea, "Kirikikiou!" At the second cry a clear, gay, and young voice answered from the elephant's belly, "Yes!" Almost immediately the plank that closed the whole was removed, and left a passage for a lad, who slid down the elephant's leg and fell at the man's feet. It was Gavroche, and the man was Montparnasse. As for the cry of "Kirikikiou," it was doubtless what the lad meant to say by, "You will ask for Monsieur Gavroche." On hearing it, he jumped up with a start, crept out of his alcove by moving the grating a little, and then carefully closing it again, after which he opened the trap and went down. The man and the child silently recognized each other in the night, and Montparnasse confined himself to saying,—
"We want you, come and give us a lift."
The gamin asked for no other explanation.
"Here I am," he said.
And the pair proceeded toward the Rue St. Antoine, whence Montparnasse had come, winding rapidly through the long file of market-carts which were coming into town at the time. The gardeners, lying on their wagons among their salads and vegetables, half asleep, and rolled up to the eyes in their great-coats, owing to the beating rain, did not even look at these strange passers-by.
[1] Écoute ce que je te dis, garçon, si j'étais sur la place, avec mon dogue, ma dague, et ma digue, et si vous me prodiguiez dix gros sous, je ne refuserais pas d'y goupiner, mais nous ne sommes pas le Mardi Gras.
[CHAPTER III.]
INCIDENTS OF AN ESCAPE.
This is what occurred on this same night at La Force. An escape had been concerted between Babet, Brujon, Gueulemer, and Thénardier, although Thénardier was in secret confinement. Babet had managed the affair on his own account during the day, as we heard from Montparnasse's narrative to Gavroche, and Montparnasse was to help them outside. Brujon, while spending a month in a punishment room, had time, first, to make a rope, and, secondly, to ripen a plan. Formerly, these severe places, in which prison discipline leaves the prisoner to himself, were composed of four stone walls, a stone ceiling, a brick pavement, a camp-bed, a grated sky-light, and a gate lined with iron, and were called dungeons; but the dungeon was considered too horrible, so now it is composed of an iron gate, a grated sky-light, a camp-bed, a brick pavement, a stone ceiling, four stone walls, and it is called a "punishment room." A little daylight is visible about midday. The inconvenience of these rooms, which, as we see, are not dungeons, is to leave beings to think who ought to be set to work. Brujon therefore reflected, and he left the punishment room with a cord. As he was considered very dangerous in the Charlemagne yard, he was placed in the Bâtiment Neuf, and the first thing he found there was Gueulemer, the second a nail,—Gueulemer, that is to say, crime; and a nail, that is to say, liberty.
Brujon, of whom it is time to form a complete idea, was, with the appearance of a delicate complexion and a deeply premeditated languor, a polished, intelligent robber, who possessed a caressing look and an atrocious smile. His look was the result of his will, and his smile the result of his nature. His first studies in his art were directed to roofs; and he had given a great impulse to the trade of lead-stealers, who strip roofs and carry away gutters by the process called au gras double. What finally rendered the moment favorable for an attempted escape was that workmen were at this very moment engaged in relaying and re-tipping a part of the prison slates. The St. Bernard was not absolutely isolated from the Charlemagne and St. Louis yards, for there were on the roof scaffolding and ladders,—in other words, bridges and staircases, on the side of deliverance. The Bâtiment Neuf, which was the most cracked and decrepit affair possible to imagine, was the weak point of the prison. Saltpetre had so gnawed the walls that it had been found necessary to prop up and shore the ceilings of the dormitories; because stones became detached and fell on the prisoners' beds. In spite of this antiquity, the error was committed of confining in there the most dangerous prisoners, and placing in it the "heavy cases," as is said in the prison jargon. The Bâtiment Neuf contained four sleeping-wards, one above the other, and a garret-floor called "Le Bel Air." A large chimney-flue, probably belonging to some old kitchen of the Dues de la Force, started from the ground-floor, passed through the four stories, cut in two the sleeping-wards, in which it figured as a sort of flattened pillar, and issued through a hole in the roof. Gueulemer and Brujon were in the same ward, and had been placed through precaution on the ground-floor. Accident willed it that the head of their beds rested against the chimney-flue. Thénardier was exactly above their heads in the garret called Bel Air.
The passer-by who stops in the Rue Culture Sainte Catherine, after passing the fire-brigade station, and in front of the bath-house gateway, sees a court-yard full of flowers and shrubs in boxes, at the end of which is a small white rotunda with two wings, enlivened by green shutters,—the bucolic dream of Jean Jacques. Not ten years ago there rose above this rotunda a black, enormous, frightful, naked wall, which was the outer wall of La Force. This wall behind this rotunda was like a glimpse of Milton caught behind Berquin. High though it was, this wall was surmounted by an even blacker roof, which could be seen beyond,—it was the roof of the Bâtiment Neuf.
Four dormer-windows protected by bars could be seen in it, and they were the windows of Bel Air; and a chimney passed through the roof, which was the chimney of the sleeping-wards. Bel Air, the attic-floor of the Bâtiment Neuf, was a species of large hall, closed with triple gratings and iron-lined doors, starred with enormous nails. When you entered by the north end, you had on your left the four dormers, and on your right facing these, four square and spacious cages, separated by narrow passages, built up to breast-height of masonry, and the rest to the roof of iron bars. Thénardier had been confined in solitary punishment since the night of February 3. It was never discovered how, or by what connivance, he succeeded in procuring and concealing a bottle of that prepared wine, invented, so it is said, by Desrues, in which a narcotic is mixed, and which the band of the Endormeurs rendered celebrated. There are in many prisons treacherous turnkeys, half jailers, half robbers, who assist in escapes, sell to the police a faithless domesticity, and "make the handle of the salad-basket dance."
On this very night, then, when little Gavroche picked up the two straying children, Brujon and Gueulemer, who knew that Babet, who had escaped that same morning, was waiting for them in the street with Montparnasse, gently rose, and began breaking open with a nail which Brujon had found the stove-pipe against which their beds were. The rubbish fell on Brujon's bed, so that it was not heard; and the gusts of wind mingled with the thunder shook the doors on their hinges, and produced a frightful and hideous row in the prison. Those prisoners who awoke pretended to fall asleep again, and left Brujon and Gueulemer to do as they pleased; and Brujon was skilful, and Gueulemer was vigorous. Before any sound had reached the watchman sleeping in the grated cell which looked into the ward, the wall was broken through, the chimney escaladed, the iron trellis-work which closed the upper opening of the flue forced, and the two formidable bandits were on the roof. The rain and the wind were tremendous, and the roof was slippery.
"What a fine sorgue [night] for a bolt!" said Brujon.
An abyss of six feet in width and eighty feet deep separated them from the surrounding wall, and at the bottom of this abyss they could see a sentry's musket gleaming in the darkness. They fastened to the ends of the chimney-bars which they had just broken the rope which Brujon had woven in the cell, threw the other end over the outer wall, crossed the abyss at a bound, clung to the coping of the wall, bestraddled it, glided in turn along the rope to a little roof which joins the bath-house, pulled their rope to them, jumped into the yard of the bath-house, pushed open the porter's casement, close to which hung his cord, pulled the cord, opened the gate, and found themselves in the street. Not three quarters of an hour had elapsed since they were standing on the bed, nail in hand, and with their plan in their heads; a few minutes after, they had rejoined Babet and Montparnasse, who were prowling in the neighborhood. On drawing the cord to them they broke it, and a piece had remained fastened to the chimney on the roof, but they had met with no other accident beyond almost entirely skinning their fingers. On this night Thénardier was warned, though it was impossible to discover how, and did not go to sleep. At about one in the morning, when the night was very black, he saw two shadows passing, in the rain and gusts, the window opposite his cage. One stopped just long enough to give a look; it was Brujon. Thénardier saw him, and understood,—that was enough for him. Thénardier, reported to be a burglar, and detained on the charge of attempting to obtain money at night by violence, was kept under constant watch; and a sentry, relieved every two hours, walked in front of his cage with a loaded musket. Bel Air was lighted by a sky-light, and the prisoner had on his feet a pair of fetters weighing fifty pounds. Every day at four in the afternoon, a turnkey, escorted by two mastiffs,—such things still happened at that day,—entered his cage, placed near his bed a black loaf of two pounds' weight, a water-jug, and a bowl of very weak broth in which a few beans floated, inspected his fetters, and tapped the bars. This man with his dogs returned twice during the night.
Thénardier had obtained permission to keep a sort of iron pin which he used to nail his bread to the wall, in order, as he said, "to preserve it from the rats." As Thénardier was under a constant watch, this pin did not seem dangerous; still it was remembered at a later day that a turnkey said, "It would have been better only to leave him a wooden skewer." At two in the morning the sentry, who was an old soldier, was changed, and a recruit substituted for him. A few minutes after, the man with the dogs paid his visit, and went away without having noticed anything, except the youthful and peasant look of the "tourlourou." Two hours after, when they came to relieve this conscript, they found him asleep, and lying like a log by the side of Thénardier's cage. As for the prisoner, he was no longer there; his severed fetters lay on the ground, and there was a hole in the ceiling of his cage, and another above it in the roof. A plank of his bed had been torn out and carried off; for it could not be found. In the cell was also found the half empty bottle, containing the rest of the drugged wine with which the young soldier had been sent to sleep. The soldier's bayonet had disappeared. At the moment when all this was discovered, Thénardier was supposed to be out of reach; the truth was, that he was no longer in the Bâtiment Neuf, but was still in great danger. Thénardier, on reaching the roof of the Bâtiment Neuf, found the remainder of Brujon's rope hanging from the chimney-bars; but as the broken cord was much too short, he was unable to cross the outer wall as Brujon and Gueulemer had done.
When you turn out of the Rue des Ballets into the Rue du Roi de Sicile, you notice almost directly on your right a dirty hollow. In the last century a house stood here, of which only the back wall exists, a perfect ruin of a wall which rises to the height of a third story between the adjacent buildings. This ruin can be recognized by two large square windows, still visible. The centre one, the one nearest the right-hand gable, is barred by a worm-eaten joist adjusted in the supporting rafter; and through these windows could be seen, formerly, a lofty lugubrious wall, which was a portion of the outer wall of La Force. The gap which the demolished house has left in the street is half filled up with a palisade of rotten planks, supported by five stone pillars, and inside is a small hut built against the still standing ruin. The boarding has a door in it which a few years ago was merely closed with a latch. It was the top of this ruin which Thénardier had attained a little after three in the morning. How did he get there? This was never explained or understood. The lightning-flashes must at once have impeded and helped him. Did he employ the ladders and scaffolding of the slaters to pass from roof to roof, over the buildings of the Charlemagne yard, those of the St. Louis yard, the outer, and thence reach the ruined wall in the Rue du Roi de Sicile? But there were in this passage breaks of continuity, which seemed to render it impossible. Had he laid the plank from his bed as a bridge from the roof of Bel Air to the outer wall, and crawled on his stomach along the coping, all round the prison till he reached the ruin? But the outer wall of La Force was very irregular; it rose and sank; it was low at the fire-brigade station, and rose again at the bath-house; it was intersected by buildings, and had everywhere drops and right angles; and then, too, the sentries must have seen the fugitive's dark outline,—and thus the road taken by Thénardier remains almost inexplicable. Had he, illumined by that frightful thirst for liberty which changes precipices into ditches, iron bars into reeds, a cripple into an athlete, a gouty patient into a bird, stupidity into instinct, instinct into intellect, and intellect into genius, invented and improvised a third mode of escape? No one ever knew.
It is not always possible to explain the marvels of an escape; the man who breaks prison is, we repeat, inspired. There is something of a star, of the lightning, in the mysterious light of the flight. The effort made for deliverance is no less surprising than the soaring toward the sublime, and people say of an escaped robber, "How did he manage to scale that roof?" in the same way as they say of Corneille, "Where did he find his qu'il mourût?" However this may be, Thénardier, dripping with perspiration, wet through with rain, with his clothes in rags, his hands skinned, his elbows bleeding, and his knees lacerated, reached the ruin-wall, lay down full length on it, and then his strength failed him. A perpendicular wall as high as a three-storied house separated him from the street, and the rope he had was too short. He waited there, pale, exhausted, despairing, though just now so hopeful, still covered by night, but saying to himself that day would soon come; horrified at the thought that he should shortly hear it strike four from the neighboring clock of St. Paul, the hour when the sentry would be changed, and be found asleep under the hole in the roof. He regarded with stupor the wet black pavement, in the light of the lamps, and at such a terrible depth,—that desired and terrific pavement which was death and which was liberty. He asked himself whether his three accomplices had succeeded in escaping, whether they were waiting for him, and if they would come to his help? He listened: excepting a patrol, no one had passed through the street since he had been lying there. Nearly all the market carts from Montreuil, Charonne, Vincennes, and Bercy came into town by the Rue St. Antoine.
Four o'clock struck, and Thénardier trembled. A few minutes after, the startled and confused noise which follows the discovery of an escape broke out in the prison. The sound of doors being opened and shut, the creaking of gates on their hinges, the tumult at the guard-room, and the clang of musket butts on the pavement of the yards, reached his ears. Lights flashed past the grated windows of the sleeping wards; a torch ran along the roof of the Bâtiment Neuf, and the firemen were called out. Three caps, which the torch lit up in the rain, came and went along the roofs, and at the same time Thénardier saw, in the direction of the Bastille, a livid gleam mournfully whitening the sky. He was on the top of a wall ten inches wide, lying in the pitiless rain, with a gulf on his right hand and on his left, unable to stir, suffering from the dizziness of a possible fall and the horror of a certain arrest, and his mind, like the clapper of a bell, went from one of these ideas to the other: "Dead if I fall; caught if I remain." In this state of agony he suddenly saw in the still perfectly dark street a man, who glided along the walls and came from the Rue Pavée, stop in the gap over which Thénardier was, as it were, suspended. This man was joined by a second, who walked with similar caution, then by a third, and then by a fourth. When these men were together, one of them raised the latch of the paling gate, and all four entered the enclosure where the hut is, and stood exactly under Thénardier. These men had evidently selected this place to consult in, in order not to be seen by passers-by, or the sentry guarding the wicket of La Force a few paces distant. We must say, too, that the rain kept this sentry confined to his box. Thénardier, unable to distinguish their faces, listened to their remarks with the desperate attention of a wretch who feels himself lost. He felt something like hope pass before his eyes, when he heard these men talking slang. The first said, in a low voice, but distinctly, something which we had better translate:—
"Let us be off. What are we doing here?"
The second replied,—
"It is raining hard enough to put out the fire of hell. And then the police will pass soon; besides, there is a sentry on. We shall get ourselves arrested here."
Two words employed, icigo and icicaille, which both mean "here," and which belong, the first to the flash language of the barrières, and the second to that of the Temple, were rays of light for Thénardier. By the icigo he recognized Brujon, who was a prowler at the barrières, and by icicaille Babet, who, among all his other trades, had been a second-hand clothes-dealer at the Temple. The antique slang of the great century is only talked now at the Temple, and Babet was the only man who spoke it in its purity. Had it not been for the icicaille, Thénardier could not have recognized him, for he had completely altered his voice. In the mean while the third man had interfered.
"There is nothing to hurry us, so let us wait a little. What is there to tell us that he does not want us?"
Through this, which was only French, Thénardier recognized Montparnasse, whose pride it was to understand all the slang dialects and not speak one of them. As for the fourth man, he held his tongue, but his wide shoulders denounced him, and Thénardier did not hesitate,—it was Gueulemer. Brujon replied almost impetuously, but still in a low voice:—
"What is that you are saying? The innkeeper has not been able to bolt. He doesn't understand the dodge. A man must be a clever hand to tear up his shirt and cut his sheets in slips to make a rope; to make holes in doors; manufacture false papers; make false keys; file his fetters through; hang his rope out of the window; hide and disguise himself. The old man cannot have done this, for he does not know how to work."
Babet added, still in the correct classic slang which Poiailler and Cartouche spoke, and which is to the new, bold, and colored slang which Brujon employed what the language of Racine is to that of André Chénier,—
"Your friend the innkeeper must have been taken in the attempt. One ought to be wide awake. He is a flat. He must have been bamboozled by a detective, perhaps even by a prison spy, who played the simpleton. Listen, Montparnasse; do you hear those shouts in the prison? You saw all those candles; he is caught again, and will get off with twenty years. I am not frightened. I am no coward, as is well known; but the only thing to be done now is to bolt, or we shall be trapped. Do not feel offended; but come with us, and let us drink a bottle of old wine together."
"Friends must not be left in a difficulty," Montparnasse growled.
"I tell you he is caught again," Brujon resumed, "and at this moment the landlord is not worth a farthing. We can do nothing for him, so let us be off. I feel at every moment as if a policeman were holding me in his hand."
Montparnasse resisted but feebly; the truth is, that these four men, with the fidelity which bandits have of never deserting each other, had prowled the whole night around La Force, in spite of the peril they incurred, in the hope of seeing Thénardier appear on the top of some wall. But the night, which became really too favorable, for the rain rendered all the streets deserted, the cold which attacked them, their dripping clothes, their worn-out shoes, the alarming noises which had broken out in the prison, the hours which had elapsed, the patrols they had met, the hope which departed, and the fear that returned,—all this urged them to retreat. Montparnasse himself, who was perhaps Thénardier's son-in-law in a certain sense, yielded, and in a moment they would be gone. Thénardier gasped on his wall as the shipwrecked crew of the "Méduse" did on their raft, when they watched the ship which they had sighted fade away on the horizon. He did not dare call to them, for a cry overheard might ruin everything; but he had an idea, a last idea, an inspiration,—he took from his pocket the end of Brujon's rope which he had detached from the chimney of the Bâtiment Neuf, and threw it at their feet.
"A cord!" said Babet
"My cord!" said Brujon.
"The landlord is there," said Montparnasse. They raised their eyes and Thénardier thrust out his head a little.
"Quiet," said Montparnasse. "Have you the other end of the rope, Brujon?"
"Yes."
"Fasten the two ends together. We will throw the rope to him; he will attach it to the wall, and it will be long enough for him to come down."
Thénardier ventured to raise his voice,—
"I am wet through."
"We'll warm you."
"I cannot stir."
"You will slip down, and we will catch you."
"My hands are swollen."
"Only just fasten the rope to the wall."
"I can't."
"One of us must go up," said Montparnasse.
"Three stories!" Brujon ejaculated.
An old plaster conduit pipe, which had served for a stove formerly, lit in the hut, ran along the wall almost to the spot where Thénardier was lying. This pipe, which at that day was full of cracks and holes, has since fallen down, but its traces may be seen. It was very narrow.
"It would be possible to mount by that," said Montparnasse.
"By that pipe?" Babet exclaimed. "A man? Oh no, a boy is required."
"Yes, a boy," Brujon said in affirmative.
"Where can we find one?" Gueulemer said.
"Wait a minute," Montparnasse said; "I have it."
He gently opened the door of the paling, assured himself that there was no passer-by in the street, went out, shut the gate cautiously after him, and ran off in the direction of the Bastille. Seven or eight minutes elapsed, eight thousand centuries for Thénardier; Babet, Brujon, and Gueulemer did not open their lips; the door opened again, and Montparnasse came in, panting and leading Gavroche. The rain continued to make the street completely deserted. Little Gavroche stepped into the enclosure and looked calmly at the faces of the bandits. The rain was dripping from his hair, and Gueulemer said to him,—
"Brat, are you a man?"
Gavroche shrugged his shoulders, and replied,—
"A child like me is a man, and men like you are children."
"What a well-hung tongue the brat has!" Babet exclaimed.
"The boy of Paris is not made of wet paste," Brujon added.
"What do you want of me?" said Gavroche.
Montparnasse answered,—
"Climb up that pipe."
"With this rope," Babet remarked.
"And fasten it," Brujon continued.
"At the top of the wall," Babet added.
"To the cross-bar of the window," Brujon said, finally.
"What next?" asked Gavroche.
"Here it is," said Gueulemer.
The gamin examined the rope, the chimney, the wall, and the window, and gave that indescribable and disdainful smack if the lips which signifies, "What is it?"
"There is a man up there whom you will save," Montparnasse continued.
"Are you willing?" Brujon asked.
"Ass!" the lad replied, as if the question seemed to him extraordinary, and took off his shoes.
Gueulemer seized Gavroche by one arm, placed him on the roof of the pent-houses, where mouldering planks bent under the boy's weight, and handed him the rope which Brujon had joined again during the absence of Montparnasse. The gamin turned to the chimney, which it was an easy task to enter by a large crevice close to the roof. At the moment when he was going to ascend, Thénardier, who saw safety and life approaching, leaned over the edge of the wall. The first gleam of day whitened his dark forehead, his livid cheek-bones, his sharp savage nose, and his bristling gray beard, and Gavroche recognized him.
"Hilloh!" he said, "it's my father. Well, that won't stop me."
And taking the rope between his teeth, he resolutely commenced his ascent. He reached the top of the wall, straddled across it like a horse, and securely fastened the rope to the topmost cross-bar of the window. A moment after, Thénardier was in the street. So soon as he touched the pavement, so soon as he felt himself out of danger, he was no longer wearied, chilled, or trembling. The terrible things he had passed through were dissipated like smoke, and all his strange and ferocious intellect was re-aroused, and found itself erect and free, ready to march onward. The first remark this man made was,—
"Well, whom are we going to eat?"
It is unnecessary to explain the meaning of this frightfully transparent sentence, which signifies at once killing, assassinating, and robbing. The real meaning of "to eat" is "to devour".
"We must get into hiding," said Brujon. "We will understand each other in three words, and then seperate at once. There was an affair that seemed good in the Rue Plumet,—a deserted street; an isolated house; old rust-eaten railings looking on a garden, and lone women."
"Well, why not try it?" Thénardier asked.
"Your daughter Éponine went to look at the thing," Babet answered.
"And has told Magnon it is 'a biscuit,'" Brujon added; "there's nothing to be done here."
"The girl's no fool," said Thénardier; "still we must see."
"Yes, yes," Brujon remarked; "we must see."
Not one of the men seemed to notice Gavroche, who, during this colloquy, was sitting on one of the posts. He waited some minutes, perhaps in the hope that his father would turn to him, and then put on his shoes again, saying,—
"Is it all over? You men don't want me any more, I suppose, as I've got you out of the scrape? I'm off, for I must go and wake my cubs."
And he went off. The five men left the enclosure in turn. When Gavroche had disappeared round the corner of the Rue des Ballets, Babet took Thénardier on one side.
"Do you notice that kid?" he asked him.
"What kid?"
"The one who climbed up the wall and handed you the rope."
"Not particularly."
"Well, I don't know; but I fancy it's your son."
"Bah!" said Thénardier; "do you think so?"