All at once, Thenardier addressed the prisoner:
“By the way, Monsieur Fabre, I might as well say it to you at once.”
These few words appeared to be the beginning of an explanation. Marius strained his ears.
“My wife will be back shortly, don’t get impatient.I think that the Lark really is your daughter, and it seems to me quite natural that you should keep her.Only, listen to me a bit.My wife will go and hunt her up with your letter.I told my wife to dress herself in the way she did, so that your young lady might make no difficulty about following her.They will both enter the carriage with my comrade behind.Somewhere, outside the barrier, there is a trap harnessed to two very good horses.Your young lady will be taken to it. She will alight from the fiacre.My comrade will enter the other vehicle with her, and my wife will come back here to tell us: `It’s done.’As for the young lady, no harm will be done to her; the trap will conduct her to a place where she will be quiet, and just as soon as you have handed over to me those little two hundred thousand francs, she will be returned to you.If you have me arrested, my comrade will give a turn of his thumb to the Lark, that’s all.”
The prisoner uttered not a syllable.After a pause, Thenardier continued:–
“It’s very simple, as you see.There’ll be no harm done unless you wish that there should be harm done.I’m telling you how things stand. I warn you so that you may be prepared.”
He paused:the prisoner did not break the silence, and Thenardier resumed:–
“As soon as my wife returns and says to me:`The Lark is on the way,’ we will release you, and you will be free to go and sleep at home. You see that our intentions are not evil.”
Terrible images passed through Marius’ mind.What!That young girl whom they were abducting was not to be brought back? One of those monsters was to bear her off into the darkness? Whither?And what if it were she!
It was clear that it was she.Marius felt his heart stop beating.
What was he to do?Discharge the pistol?place all those scoundrels in the hands of justice?But the horrible man with the meat-axe would, none the less, be out of reach with the young girl, and Marius reflected on Thenardier’s words, of which he perceived the bloody significance:”If you have me arrested, my comrade will give a turn of his thumb to the Lark.”
Now, it was not alone by the colonel’s testament, it was by his own love, it was by the peril of the one he loved, that he felt himself restrained.
This frightful situation, which had already lasted above half an hour, was changing its aspect every moment.
Marius had sufficient strength of mind to review in succession all the most heart-breaking conjectures, seeking hope and finding none.
The tumult of his thoughts contrasted with the funereal silence of the den.
In the midst of this silence, the door at the bottom of the staircase was heard to open and shut again.
The prisoner made a movement in his bonds.
“Here’s the bourgeoise,” said Thenardier.
He had hardly uttered the words, when the Thenardier woman did in fact rush hastily into the room, red, panting, breathless, with flaming eyes, and cried, as she smote her huge hands on her thighs simultaneously:–
“False address!”
The ruffian who had gone with her made his appearance behind her and picked up his axe again.
She resumed:–
“Nobody there!Rue Saint-Dominique, No. 17, no Monsieur Urbain Fabre! They know not what it means!”
She paused, choking, then went on:–
“Monsieur Thenardier!That old fellow has duped you!You are too good, you see!If it had been me, I’d have chopped the beast in four quarters to begin with!And if he had acted ugly, I’d have boiled him alive!He would have been obliged to speak, and say where the girl is, and where he keeps his shiners!That’s the way I should have managed matters!people are perfectly right when they say that men are a deal stupider than women!Nobody at No. 17. It’s nothing but a big carriage gate!No Monsieur Fabre in the Rue Saint-Dominique! And after all that racing and fee to the coachman and all!I spoke to both the porter and the portress, a fine, stout woman, and they know nothing about him!”
Marius breathed freely once more.
She, Ursule or the Lark, he no longer knew what to call her, was safe.
While his exasperated wife vociferated, Thenardier had seated himself on the table.
For several minutes he uttered not a word, but swung his right foot, which hung down, and stared at the brazier with an air of savage revery.
Finally, he said to the prisoner, with a slow and singularly ferocious tone:
“A false address?What did you expect to gain by that?”
“To gain time!” cried the prisoner in a thundering voice, and at the same instant he shook off his bonds; they were cut. The prisoner was only attached to the bed now by one leg.
Before the seven men had time to collect their senses and dash forward, he had bent down into the fireplace, had stretched out his hand to the brazier, and had then straightened himself up again, and now Thenardier, the female Thenardier, and the ruffians, huddled in amazement at the extremity of the hovel, stared at him in stupefaction, as almost free and in a formidable attitude, he brandished above his head the red-hot chisel, which emitted a threatening glow.
The judicial examination to which the ambush in the Gorbeau house eventually gave rise, established the fact that a large sou piece, cut and worked in a peculiar fashion, was found in the garret, when the police made their descent on it.This sou piece was one of those marvels of industry, which are engendered by the patience of the galleys in the shadows and for the shadows, marvels which are nothing else than instruments of escape. These hideous and delicate products of wonderful art are to jewellers’ work what the metaphors of slang are to poetry.There are Benvenuto Cellinis in the galleys, just as there are Villons in language. The unhappy wretch who aspires to deliverance finds means sometimes without tools, sometimes with a common wooden-handled knife, to saw a sou into two thin plates, to hollow out these plates without affecting the coinage stamp, and to make a furrow on the edge of the sou in such a manner that the plates will adhere again. This can be screwed together and unscrewed at will; it is a box. In this box he hides a watch-spring, and this watch-spring, properly handled, cuts good-sized chains and bars of iron. The unfortunate convict is supposed to possess merely a sou; not at all, he possesses liberty.It was a large sou of this sort which, during the subsequent search of the police, was found under the bed near the window.They also found a tiny saw of blue steel which would fit the sou.
It is probable that the prisoner had this sou piece on his person at the moment when the ruffians searched him, that he contrived to conceal it in his hand, and that afterward, having his right hand free, he unscrewed it, and used it as a saw to cut the cords which fastened him, which would explain the faint noise and almost imperceptible movements which Marius had observed.
As he had not been able to bend down, for fear of betraying himself, he had not cut the bonds of his left leg.
The ruffians had recovered from their first surprise.
“Be easy,” said Bigrenaille to Thenardier.”He still holds by one leg, and he can’t get away.I’ll answer for that.I tied that paw for him.”
In the meanwhile, the prisoner had begun to speak:–
“You are wretches, but my life is not worth the trouble of defending it.When you think that you can make me speak, that you can make me write what I do not choose to write, that you can make me say what I do not choose to say–“
He stripped up his left sleeve, and added:–
“See here.”
At the same moment he extended his arm, and laid the glowing chisel which he held in his left hand by its wooden handle on his bare flesh.
The crackling of the burning flesh became audible, and the odor peculiar to chambers of torture filled the hovel.
Marius reeled in utter horror, the very ruffians shuddered, hardly a muscle of the old man’s face contracted, and while the red-hot iron sank into the smoking wound, impassive and almost august, he fixed on Thenardier his beautiful glance, in which there was no hatred, and where suffering vanished in serene majesty.
With grand and lofty natures, the revolts of the flesh and the senses when subjected to physical suffering cause the soul to spring forth, and make it appear on the brow, just as rebellions among the soldiery force the captain to show himself.
“Wretches!” said he, “have no more fear of me than I have for you!”
And, tearing the chisel from the wound, he hurled it through the window, which had been left open; the horrible, glowing tool disappeared into the night, whirling as it flew, and fell far away on the snow.
The prisoner resumed:–
“Do what you please with me.”He was disarmed.
“Seize him!” said Thenardier.
Two of the ruffians laid their hands on his shoulder, and the masked man with the ventriloquist’s voice took up his station in front of him, ready to smash his skull at the slightest movement.
At the same time, Marius heard below him, at the base of the partition, but so near that he could not see who was speaking, this colloquy conducted in a low tone:–
“There is only one thing left to do.”
“Cut his throat.”
“That’s it.”
It was the husband and wife taking counsel together.
Thenardier walked slowly towards the table, opened the drawer, and took out the knife.Marius fretted with the handle of his pistol. Unprecedented perplexity!For the last hour he had had two voices in his conscience, the one enjoining him to respect his father’s testament, the other crying to him to rescue the prisoner. These two voices continued uninterruptedly that struggle which tormented him to agony.Up to that moment he had cherished a vague hope that he should find some means of reconciling these two duties, but nothing within the limits of possibility had presented itself.
However, the peril was urgent, the last bounds of delay had been reached; Thenardier was standing thoughtfully a few paces distant from the prisoner.
Marius cast a wild glance about him, the last mechanical resource of despair.All at once a shudder ran through him.
At his feet, on the table, a bright ray of light from the full moon illuminated and seemed to point out to him a sheet of paper. On this paper he read the following line written that very morning, in large letters, by the eldest of the Thenardier girls:–
“THE BOBBIES ARE HERE.”
An idea, a flash, crossed Marius’ mind; this was the expedient of which he was in search, the solution of that frightful problem which was torturing him, of sparing the assassin and saving the victim.
He knelt down on his commode, stretched out his arm, seized the sheet of paper, softly detached a bit of plaster from the wall, wrapped the paper round it, and tossed the whole through the crevice into the middle of the den.
It was high time.Thenardier had conquered his last fears or his last scruples, and was advancing on the prisoner.
“Something is falling!” cried the Thenardier woman.
“What is it?” asked her husband.
The woman darted forward and picked up the bit of plaster. She handed it to her husband.
“Where did this come from?” demanded Thenardier.
“pardie!” ejaculated his wife, “where do you suppose it came from? Through the window, of course.”
“I saw it pass,” said Bigrenaille.
Thenardier rapidly unfolded the paper and held it close to the candle.
“It’s in Eponine’s handwriting.The devil!”
He made a sign to his wife, who hastily drew near, and showed her the line written on the sheet of paper, then he added in a subdued voice:–
“Quick!The ladder!Let’s leave the bacon in the mousetrap and decamp!”
“Without cutting that man’s throat?” asked, the Thenardier woman.
“We haven’t the time.”
“Through what?” resumed Bigrenaille.
“Through the window,” replied Thenardier.”Since ponine has thrown the stone through the window, it indicates that the house is not watched on that side.”
The mask with the ventriloquist’s voice deposited his huge key on the floor, raised both arms in the air, and opened and clenched his fists, three times rapidly without uttering a word.
This was the signal like the signal for clearing the decks for action on board ship.
The ruffians who were holding the prisoner released him; in the twinkling of an eye the rope ladder was unrolled outside the window, and solidly fastened to the sill by the two iron hooks.
The prisoner paid no attention to what was going on around him. He seemed to be dreaming or praying.
As soon as the ladder was arranged, Thenardier cried:
“Come! the bourgeoise first!”
And he rushed headlong to the window.
But just as he was about to throw his leg over, Bigrenaille seized him roughly by the collar.
“Not much, come now, you old dog, after us!”
“After us!” yelled the ruffians.
“You are children,” said Thenardier, “we are losing time. The police are on our heels.”
“Well, said the ruffians, “let’s draw lots to see who shall go down first.”
Thenardier exclaimed:–
“Are you mad!Are you crazy!What a pack of boobies!You want to waste time, do you?Draw lots, do you?By a wet finger, by a short straw!With written names!Thrown into a hat!–“
“Would you like my hat?” cried a voice on the threshold.
All wheeled round.It was Javert.
He had his hat in his hand, and was holding it out to them with a smile.