Les Misérables, page 261
CHAPTER III--THE VICISSITUDES OF FLIGHT
This is what had taken place that same night at the La Force:--
An escape had been planned between Babet, Brujon, Guelemer, andThénardier, although Thénardier was in close confinement. Babet hadarranged the matter for his own benefit, on the same day, as the readerhas seen from Montparnasse's account to Gavroche. Montparnasse was tohelp them from outside.
Brujon, after having passed a month in the punishment cell, had hadtime, in the first place, to weave a rope, in the second, to mature aplan. In former times, those severe places where the discipline of theprison delivers the convict into his own hands, were composed of fourstone walls, a stone ceiling, a flagged pavement, a camp bed, a gratedwindow, and a door lined with iron, and were called _dungeons_; but thedungeon was judged to be too terrible; nowadays they are composed of aniron door, a grated window, a camp bed, a flagged pavement, four stonewalls, and a stone ceiling, and are called _chambers of punishment_. Alittle light penetrates towards mid-day. The inconvenient point aboutthese chambers which, as the reader sees, are not dungeons, is that theyallow the persons who should be at work to think.
So Brujon meditated, and he emerged from the chamber of punishment witha rope. As he had the name of being very dangerous in the Charlemagnecourtyard, he was placed in the New Building. The first thing he foundin the New Building was Guelemer, the second was a nail; Guelemer, thatis to say, crime; a nail, that is to say, liberty. Brujon, of whom itis high time that the reader should have a complete idea, was, with anappearance of delicate health and a profoundly premeditated languor, apolished, intelligent sprig, and a thief, who had a caressing glance,and an atrocious smile. His glance resulted from his will, and hissmile from his nature. His first studies in his art had been directedto roofs. He had made great progress in the industry of the men who tearoff lead, who plunder the roofs and despoil the gutters by the processcalled _double pickings_.
The circumstance which put the finishing touch on the moment peculiarlyfavorable for an attempt at escape, was that the roofers were re-layingand re-jointing, at that very moment, a portion of the slates on theprison. The Saint-Bernard courtyard was no longer absolutely isolatedfrom the Charlemagne and the Saint-Louis courts. Up above there werescaffoldings and ladders; in other words, bridges and stairs in thedirection of liberty.
The New Building, which was the most cracked and decrepit thing to beseen anywhere in the world, was the weak point in the prison. The wallswere eaten by saltpetre to such an extent that the authorities had beenobliged to line the vaults of the dormitories with a sheathing of wood,because stones were in the habit of becoming detached and falling onthe prisoners in their beds. In spite of this antiquity, the authoritiescommitted the error of confining in the New Building the mosttroublesome prisoners, of placing there "the hard cases," as they say inprison parlance.
The New Building contained four dormitories, one above the other, and atop story which was called the Bel-Air (Fine-Air). A large chimney-flue,probably from some ancient kitchen of the Dukes de la Force, startedfrom the groundfloor, traversed all four stories, cut the dormitories,where it figured as a flattened pillar, into two portions, and finallypierced the roof.
Guelemer and Brujon were in the same dormitory. They had been placed, byway of precaution, on the lower story. Chance ordained that the heads oftheir beds should rest against the chimney.
Thénardier was directly over their heads in the top story known asFine-Air. The pedestrian who halts on the Rue Culture-Sainte-Catherine,after passing the barracks of the firemen, in front of the porte-cochèreof the bathing establishment, beholds a yard full of flowers and shrubsin wooden boxes, at the extremity of which spreads out a little whiterotunda with two wings, brightened up with green shutters, the bucolicdream of Jean Jacques.
Not more than ten years ago, there rose above that rotunda an enormousblack, hideous, bare wall by which it was backed up.
This was the outer wall of La Force.
This wall, beside that rotunda, was Milton viewed through Berquin.
Lofty as it was, this wall was overtopped by a still blacker roof, whichcould be seen beyond. This was the roof of the New Building. Thereone could descry four dormer-windows, guarded with bars; they were thewindows of the Fine-Air.
A chimney pierced the roof; this was the chimney which traversed thedormitories.
The Bel-Air, that top story of the New Building, was a sort of largehall, with a Mansard roof, guarded with triple gratings and double doorsof sheet iron, which were studded with enormous bolts. When one enteredfrom the north end, one had on one's left the four dormer-windows, onone's right, facing the windows, at regular intervals, four square,tolerably vast cages, separated by narrow passages, built of masonryto about the height of the elbow, and the rest, up to the roof, of ironbars.
Thénardier had been in solitary confinement in one of these cages sincethe night of the 3d of February. No one was ever able to discover how,and by what connivance, he succeeded in procuring, and secreting abottle of wine, invented, so it is said, by Desrues, with whicha narcotic is mixed, and which the band of the _Endormeurs_, or_Sleep-compellers_, rendered famous.
There are, in many prisons, treacherous employees, half-jailers,half-thieves, who assist in escapes, who sell to the police anunfaithful service, and who turn a penny whenever they can.
On that same night, then, when Little Gavroche picked up the two lostchildren, Brujon and Guelemer, who knew that Babet, who had escaped thatmorning, was waiting for them in the street as well as Montparnasse,rose softly, and with the nail which Brujon had found, began to piercethe chimney against which their beds stood. The rubbish fell on Brujon'sbed, so that they were not heard. Showers mingled with thunder shookthe doors on their hinges, and created in the prison a terrible andopportune uproar. Those of the prisoners who woke, pretended to fallasleep again, and left Guelemer and Brujon to their own devices. Brujonwas adroit; Guelemer was vigorous. Before any sound had reached thewatcher, who was sleeping in the grated cell which opened into thedormitory, the wall had, been pierced, the chimney scaled, the irongrating which barred the upper orifice of the flue forced, and the tworedoubtable ruffians were on the roof. The wind and rain redoubled, theroof was slippery.
"What a good night to leg it!" said Brujon.
An abyss six feet broad and eighty feet deep separated them from thesurrounding wall. At the bottom of this abyss, they could see the musketof a sentinel gleaming through the gloom. They fastened one end of therope which Brujon had spun in his dungeon to the stumps of the iron barswhich they had just wrenched off, flung the other over the outer wall,crossed the abyss at one bound, clung to the coping of the wall, gotastride of it, let themselves slip, one after the other, along the rope,upon a little roof which touches the bath-house, pulled their rope afterthem, jumped down into the courtyard of the bath-house, traversed it,pushed open the porter's wicket, beside which hung his rope, pulledthis, opened the porte-cochère, and found themselves in the street.
Three-quarters of an hour had not elapsed since they had risen in bed inthe dark, nail in hand, and their project in their heads.
A few moments later they had joined Babet and Montparnasse, who wereprowling about the neighborhood.
They had broken their rope in pulling it after them, and a bit of itremained attached to the chimney on the roof. They had sustained noother damage, however, than that of scratching nearly all the skin offtheir hands.
That night, Thénardier was warned, without any one being able to explainhow, and was not asleep.
Towards one o'clock in the morning, the night being very dark, he sawtwo shadows pass along the roof, in the rain and squalls, in front ofthe dormer-window which was opposite his cage. One halted at the window,long enough to dart in a glance. This was Brujon.
Thénardier recognized him, and understood. This was enough.
Thénardier, rated as a burglar, and detained as a measure of precautionunder the charge of organizing a nocturnal ambush, with armed force, waskept in sight. The sentry, who was relieved every two hours, marchedup and down in front of his cage with loaded musket. The Fine-Air waslighted by a skylight. The prisoner had on his feet fetters weighingfifty pounds. Every day, at four o'clock in the afternoon, a jailer,escorted by two dogs,--this was still in vogue at that time,--enteredhis cage, deposited beside his bed a loaf of black bread weighing twopounds, a jug of water, a bowl filled with rather thin bouillon, inwhich swam a few Mayagan beans, inspected his irons and tapped the bars.This man and his dogs made two visits during the night.
Thénardier had obtained permission to keep a sort of iron bolt which heused to spike his bread into a crack in the wall, "in order to preserveit from the rats," as he said. As Thénardier was kept in sight,no objection had been made to this spike. Still, it was rememberedafterwards, that one of the jailers had said: "It would be better to lethim have only a wooden spike."
At two o'clock in the morning, the sentinel, who was an old soldier, wasrelieved, and replaced by a conscript. A few moments later, the man withthe dogs paid his visit, and went off without noticing anything, except,possibly, the excessive youth and "the rustic air" of the "raw recruit."Two hours afterwards, at four o'clock, when they came to relieve theconscript, he was found asleep on the floor, lying like a log nearThénardier's cage. As for Thénardier, he was no longer there. There wasa hole in the ceiling of his cage, and, above it, another hole in theroof. One of the planks of his bed had been wrenched off, and probablycarried away with him, as it was not found. They also seized in his cella half-empty bottle which contained the remains of the stupefying winewith which the soldier had been drugged. The soldier's bayonet haddisappeared.
At the moment when this discovery was made, it was assumed thatThénardier was out of reach. The truth is, that he was no longer in theNew Building, but that he was still in great danger.
Thénardier, on reaching the roof of the New Building, had found theremains of Brujon's rope hanging to the bars of the upper trap of thechimney, but, as this broken fragment was much too short, he had notbeen able to escape by the outer wall, as Brujon and Guelemer had done.
When one turns from the Rue des Ballets into the Rue du Roi-de-Sicile,one almost immediately encounters a repulsive ruin. There stood onthat spot, in the last century, a house of which only the back wall nowremains, a regular wall of masonry, which rises to the height of thethird story between the adjoining buildings. This ruin can be recognizedby two large square windows which are still to be seen there; the middleone, that nearest the right gable, is barred with a worm-eaten beamadjusted like a prop. Through these windows there was formerly visible alofty and lugubrious wall, which was a fragment of the outer wall of LaForce.
The empty space on the street left by the demolished house ishalf-filled by a fence of rotten boards, shored up by five stone posts.In this recess lies concealed a little shanty which leans against theportion of the ruin which has remained standing. The fence has a gate,which, a few years ago, was fastened only by a latch.
It was the crest of this ruin that Thénardier had succeeded in reaching,a little after one o'clock in the morning.
How had he got there? That is what no one has ever been able to explainor understand. The lightning must, at the same time, have hinderedand helped him. Had he made use of the ladders and scaffoldings of theslaters to get from roof to roof, from enclosure to enclosure, fromcompartment to compartment, to the buildings of the Charlemagne court,then to the buildings of the Saint-Louis court, to the outer wall, andthence to the hut on the Rue du Roi-de-Sicile? But in that itinerarythere existed breaks which seemed to render it an impossibility. Hadhe placed the plank from his bed like a bridge from the roof of theFine-Air to the outer wall, and crawled flat, on his belly on the copingof the outer wall the whole distance round the prison as far as the hut?But the outer wall of La Force formed a crenellated and unequal line;it mounted and descended, it dropped at the firemen's barracks, it rosetowards the bath-house, it was cut in twain by buildings, it was noteven of the same height on the Hotel Lamoignon as on the Rue Pavée;everywhere occurred falls and right angles; and then, the sentinels musthave espied the dark form of the fugitive; hence, the route taken byThénardier still remains rather inexplicable. In two manners, flight wasimpossible. Had Thénardier, spurred on by that thirst for liberty whichchanges precipices into ditches, iron bars into wattles of osier, alegless man into an athlete, a gouty man into a bird, stupidity intoinstinct, instinct into intelligence, and intelligence into genius, hadThénardier invented a third mode? No one has ever found out.
The marvels of escape cannot always be accounted for. The man who makeshis escape, we repeat, is inspired; there is something of the star andof the lightning in the mysterious gleam of flight; the effort towardsdeliverance is no less surprising than the flight towards the sublime,and one says of the escaped thief: "How did he contrive to scale thatwall?" in the same way that one says of Corneille: "Where did he find_the means of dying?_"
At all events, dripping with perspiration, drenched with rain, with hisclothes hanging in ribbons, his hands flayed, his elbows bleeding, hisknees torn, Thénardier had reached what children, in their figurativelanguage, call _the edge_ of the wall of the ruin, there he hadstretched himself out at full length, and there his strength had failedhim. A steep escarpment three stories high separated him from thepavement of the street.
The rope which he had was too short.
There he waited, pale, exhausted, desperate with all the despair whichhe had undergone, still hidden by the night, but telling himself thatthe day was on the point of dawning, alarmed at the idea of hearing theneighboring clock of Saint-Paul strike four within a few minutes, anhour when the sentinel was relieved and when the latter would be foundasleep under the pierced roof, staring in horror at a terrible depth, atthe light of the street lanterns, the wet, black pavement, that pavementlonged for yet frightful, which meant death, and which meant liberty.
He asked himself whether his three accomplices in flight had succeeded,if they had heard him, and if they would come to his assistance. Helistened. With the exception of the patrol, no one had passed throughthe street since he had been there. Nearly the whole of the descent ofthe market-gardeners from Montreuil, from Charonne, from Vincennes,and from Bercy to the markets was accomplished through the RueSaint-Antoine.
Four o'clock struck. Thénardier shuddered. A few moments later, thatterrified and confused uproar which follows the discovery of an escapebroke forth in the prison. The sound of doors opening and shutting, thecreaking of gratings on their hinges, a tumult in the guard-house, thehoarse shouts of the turnkeys, the shock of musket-butts on the pavementof the courts, reached his ears. Lights ascended and descended past thegrated windows of the dormitories, a torch ran along the ridge-pole ofthe top story of the New Building, the firemen belonging in the barrackson the right had been summoned. Their helmets, which the torch lightedup in the rain, went and came along the roofs. At the same time,Thénardier perceived in the direction of the Bastille a wan whitenesslighting up the edge of the sky in doleful wise.
He was on top of a wall ten inches wide, stretched out under the heavyrains, with two gulfs to right and left, unable to stir, subject to thegiddiness of a possible fall, and to the horror of a certain arrest,and his thoughts, like the pendulum of a clock, swung from one of theseideas to the other: "Dead if I fall, caught if I stay." In the midst ofthis anguish, he suddenly saw, the street being still dark, a man whowas gliding along the walls and coming from the Rue Pavée, halt in therecess above which Thénardier was, as it were, suspended. Here thisman was joined by a second, who walked with the same caution, then bya third, then by a fourth. When these men were re-united, one of themlifted the latch of the gate in the fence, and all four enteredthe enclosure in which the shanty stood. They halted directly underThénardier. These men had evidently chosen this vacant space in orderthat they might consult without being seen by the passers-by or by thesentinel who guards the wicket of La Force a few paces distant. Itmust be added, that the rain kept this sentinel blocked in his box.Thénardier, not being able to distinguish their visages, lent an ear totheir words with the desperate attention of a wretch who feels himselflost.
Thénardier saw something resembling a gleam of hope flash before hiseyes,--these men conversed in slang.
The first said in a low but distinct voice:--
"Let's cut. What are we up to here?"
The second replied: "It's raining hard enough to put out the verydevil's fire. And the bobbies will be along instanter. There's a soldieron guard yonder. We shall get nabbed here."
These two words, _icigo_ and _icicaille_, both of which mean _ici_, andwhich belong, the first to the slang of the barriers, the second tothe slang of the Temple, were flashes of light for Thénardier. By the_icigo_ he recognized Brujon, who was a prowler of the barriers, bythe _icicaille_ he knew Babet, who, among his other trades, had been anold-clothes broker at the Temple.
The antique slang of the great century is no longer spoken except inthe Temple, and Babet was really the only person who spoke it in all itspurity. Had it not been for the _icicaille_, Thénardier would not haverecognized him, for he had entirely changed his voice.
In the meanwhile, the third man had intervened.
"There's no hurry yet, let's wait a bit. How do we know that he doesn'tstand in need of us?"
By this, which was nothing but French, Thénardier recognizedMontparnasse, who made it a point in his elegance to understand allslangs and to speak none of them.
As for the fourth, he held his peace, but his huge shoulders betrayedhim. Thénardier did not hesitate. It was Guelemer.
Brujon replied almost impetuously but still in a low tone:--
"What are you jabbering about? The tavern-keeper hasn't managed to cuthis stick. He don't tumble to the racket, that he don't! You have to bea pretty knowing cove to tear up your shirt, cut up your sheet to makea rope, punch holes in doors, get up false papers, make false keys, fileyour irons, hang out your cord, hide yourself, and disguise yourself!The old fellow hasn't managed to play it, he doesn't understand how towork the business."
Babet added, still in that classical slang which was spoken byPoulailler and Cartouche, and which is to the bold, new, highly coloredand risky argot used by Brujon what the language of Racine is to thelanguage of André Chenier:--
"Your tavern-keeper must have been nabbed in the act. You have to beknowing. He's only a greenhorn. He must have let himself be taken inby a bobby, perhaps even by a sheep who played it on him as his pal.Listen, Montparnasse, do you hear those shouts in the prison? You haveseen all those lights. He's recaptured, there! He'll get off with twentyyears. I ain't afraid, I ain't a coward, but there ain't anything moreto do, or otherwise they'd lead us a dance. Don't get mad, come with us,let's go drink a bottle of old wine together."
"One doesn't desert one's friends in a scrape," grumbled Montparnasse.
"I tell you he's nabbed!" retorted Brujon. "At the present moment, theinn-keeper ain't worth a ha'penny. We can't do nothing for him. Let's beoff. Every minute I think a bobby has got me in his fist."
Montparnasse no longer offered more than a feeble resistance; the factis, that these four men, with the fidelity of ruffians who never abandoneach other, had prowled all night long about La Force, great as wastheir peril, in the hope of seeing Thénardier make his appearance on thetop of some wall. But the night, which was really growing too fine,--forthe downpour was such as to render all the streets deserted,--the coldwhich was overpowering them, their soaked garments, their hole-riddenshoes, the alarming noise which had just burst forth in the prison, thehours which had elapsed, the patrol which they had encountered, thehope which was vanishing, all urged them to beat a retreat. Montparnassehimself, who was, perhaps, almost Thénardier's son-in-law, yielded. Amoment more, and they would be gone. Thénardier was panting on his walllike the shipwrecked sufferers of the _Méduse_ on their raft when theybeheld the vessel which had appeared in sight vanish on the horizon.
He dared not call to them; a cry might be heard and ruin everything. Anidea occurred to him, a last idea, a flash of inspiration; he drew fromhis pocket the end of Brujon's rope, which he had detached from thechimney of the New Building, and flung it into the space enclosed by thefence.
This rope fell at their feet.
"A widow,"37 said Babet.
"My tortouse!"38 said Brujon.
"The tavern-keeper is there," said Montparnasse.
They raised their eyes. Thénardier thrust out his head a very little.
"Quick!" said Montparnasse, "have you the other end of the rope,Brujon?"
"Yes."
"Knot the two pieces together, we'll fling him the rope, he can fastenit to the wall, and he'll have enough of it to get down with."
Thénardier ran the risk, and spoke:--
"I am paralyzed with cold."
"We'll warm you up."
"I can't budge."
"Let yourself slide, we'll catch you."
"My hands are benumbed."
"Only fasten the rope to the wall."
"I can't."
"Then one of us must climb up," said Montparnasse.
"Three stories!" ejaculated Brujon.
An ancient plaster flue, which had served for a stove that had been usedin the shanty in former times, ran along the wall and mounted almostto the very spot where they could see Thénardier. This flue, then muchdamaged and full of cracks, has since fallen, but the marks of it arestill visible.
It was very narrow.
"One might get up by the help of that," said Montparnasse.
"By that flue?" exclaimed Babet, "a grown-up cove, never! it would takea brat."
"A brat must be got," resumed Brujon.
"Where are we to find a young 'un?" said Guelemer.
"Wait," said Montparnasse. "I've got the very article."
He opened the gate of the fence very softly, made sure that no one waspassing along the street, stepped out cautiously, shut the gate behindhim, and set off at a run in the direction of the Bastille.
Seven or eight minutes elapsed, eight thousand centuries to Thénardier;Babet, Brujon, and Guelemer did not open their lips; at last the gateopened once more, and Montparnasse appeared, breathless, and followed byGavroche. The rain still rendered the street completely deserted.
Little Gavroche entered the enclosure and gazed at the forms of theseruffians with a tranquil air. The water was dripping from his hair.Guelemer addressed him:--
"Are you a man, young 'un?"
Gavroche shrugged his shoulders, and replied:--
"A young 'un like me's a man, and men like you are babes."
"The brat's tongue's well hung!" exclaimed Babet.
"The Paris brat ain't made of straw," added Brujon.
"What do you want?" asked Gavroche.
Montparnasse answered:--
"Climb up that flue."
"With this rope," said Babet.
"And fasten it," continued Brujon.
"To the top of the wall," went on Babet.
"To the cross-bar of the window," added Brujon.
"And then?" said Gavroche.
"There!" said Guelemer.
The gamin examined the rope, the flue, the wall, the windows, and madethat indescribable and disdainful noise with his lips which signifies:--
"Is that all!"
"There's a man up there whom you are to save," resumed Montparnasse.
"Will you?" began Brujon again.
"Greenhorn!" replied the lad, as though the question appeared a mostunprecedented one to him.
And he took off his shoes.
Guelemer seized Gavroche by one arm, set him on the roof of the shanty,whose worm-eaten planks bent beneath the urchin's weight, and handedhim the rope which Brujon had knotted together during Montparnasse'sabsence. The gamin directed his steps towards the flue, which it waseasy to enter, thanks to a large crack which touched the roof. At themoment when he was on the point of ascending, Thénardier, who saw lifeand safety approaching, bent over the edge of the wall; the first lightof dawn struck white upon his brow dripping with sweat, upon his lividcheek-bones, his sharp and savage nose, his bristling gray beard, andGavroche recognized him.
"Hullo! it's my father! Oh, that won't hinder."
And taking the rope in his teeth, he resolutely began the ascent.
He reached the summit of the hut, bestrode the old wall as though it hadbeen a horse, and knotted the rope firmly to the upper cross-bar of thewindow.
A moment later, Thénardier was in the street.
As soon as he touched the pavement, as soon as he found himself outof danger, he was no longer either weary, or chilled or trembling; theterrible things from which he had escaped vanished like smoke, all thatstrange and ferocious mind awoke once more, and stood erect and free,ready to march onward.
These were this man's first words:--
"Now, whom are we to eat?"
It is useless to explain the sense of this frightfully transparentremark, which signifies both to kill, to assassinate, and to plunder._To eat_, true sense: _to devour_.
"Let's get well into a corner," said Brujon. "Let's settle it in threewords, and part at once. There was an affair that promised well in theRue Plumet, a deserted street, an isolated house, an old rotten gate ona garden, and lone women."
"Well! why not?" demanded Thénardier.
"Your girl, Éponine, went to see about the matter," replied Babet.
"And she brought a biscuit to Magnon," added Guelemer. "Nothing to bemade there."
"The girl's no fool," said Thénardier. "Still, it must be seen to."
"Yes, yes," said Brujon, "it must be looked up."
In the meanwhile, none of the men seemed to see Gavroche, who, duringthis colloquy, had seated himself on one of the fence-posts; he waiteda few moments, thinking that perhaps his father would turn towards him,then he put on his shoes again, and said:--
"Is that all? You don't want any more, my men? Now you're out of yourscrape. I'm off. I must go and get my brats out of bed."
And off he went.
The five men emerged, one after another, from the enclosure.
When Gavroche had disappeared at the corner of the Rue des Ballets,Babet took Thénardier aside.
"Did you take a good look at that young 'un?" he asked.
"What young 'un?"
"The one who climbed the wall and carried you the rope."
"Not particularly."
"Well, I don't know, but it strikes me that it was your son."
"Bah!" said Thénardier, "do you think so?"
BOOK SEVENTH.--SLANG
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