Виктор Мари Гюго
Les Misérables, v. 4
"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.
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?"
