Les Misérables by Victor Hugo (early reader books txt) 📕
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- Author: Victor Hugo
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He might have told himself that M. Leblanc had promised to return in the evening, and that all he had to do was to set about the matter more skilfully, so that he might follow him on that occasion; but, in his contemplation, it is doubtful whether he had heard this.
As he was on the point of mounting the staircase, he perceived, on the other side of the boulevard, near the deserted wall skirting the Rue De la Barrière-des-Gobelins, Jondrette, wrapped in the “philanthropist’s” great-coat, engaged in conversation with one of those men of disquieting aspect who have been dubbed by common consent, prowlers of the barriers; people of equivocal face, of suspicious monologues, who present the air of having evil minds, and who generally sleep in the daytime, which suggests the supposition that they work by night.
These two men, standing there motionless and in conversation, in the snow which was falling in whirlwinds, formed a group that a policeman would surely have observed, but which Marius hardly noticed.
Still, in spite of his mournful preoccupation, he could not refrain from saying to himself that this prowler of the barriers with whom Jondrette was talking resembled a certain Panchaud, alias Printanier, alias Bigrenaille, whom Courfeyrac had once pointed out to him as a very dangerous nocturnal roamer. This man’s name the reader has learned in the preceding book. This Panchaud, alias Printanier, alias Bigrenaille, figured later on in many criminal trials, and became a notorious rascal. He was at that time only a famous rascal. To-day he exists in the state of tradition among ruffians and assassins. He was at the head of a school towards the end of the last reign. And in the evening, at nightfall, at the hour when groups form and talk in whispers, he was discussed at La Force in the Fosse-aux-Lions. One might even, in that prison, precisely at the spot where the sewer which served the unprecedented escape, in broad daylight, of thirty prisoners, in 1843, passes under the culvert, read his name, PANCHAUD, audaciously carved by his own hand on the wall of the sewer, during one of his attempts at flight. In 1832, the police already had their eye on him, but he had not as yet made a serious beginning.
Marius ascended the stairs of the hovel with slow steps; at the moment when he was about to re-enter his cell, he caught sight of the elder Jondrette girl following him through the corridor. The very sight of this girl was odious to him; it was she who had his five francs, it was too late to demand them back, the cab was no longer there, the fiacre was far away. Moreover, she would not have given them back. As for questioning her about the residence of the persons who had just been there, that was useless; it was evident that she did not know, since the letter signed Fabantou had been addressed “to the benevolent gentleman of the church of Saint-Jacques-du-Haut-Pas.”
Marius entered his room and pushed the door to after him.
It did not close; he turned round and beheld a hand which held the door half open.
“What is it?” he asked, “who is there?”
It was the Jondrette girl.
“Is it you?” resumed Marius almost harshly, “still you! What do you want with me?”
She appeared to be thoughtful and did not look at him. She no longer had the air of assurance which had characterized her that morning. She did not enter, but held back in the darkness of the corridor, where Marius could see her through the half-open door.
“Come now, will you answer?” cried Marius. “What do you want with me?”
She raised her dull eyes, in which a sort of gleam seemed to flicker vaguely, and said:—
“Monsieur Marius, you look sad. What is the matter with you?”
“With me!” said Marius.
“Yes, you.”
“There is nothing the matter with me.”
“Yes, there is!”
“No.”
“I tell you there is!”
“Let me alone!”
Marius gave the door another push, but she retained her hold on it.
“Stop,” said she, “you are in the wrong. Although you are not rich, you were kind this morning. Be so again now. You gave me something to eat, now tell me what ails you. You are grieved, that is plain. I do not want you to be grieved. What can be done for it? Can I be of any service? Employ me. I do not ask for your secrets, you need not tell them to me, but I may be of use, nevertheless. I may be able to help you, since I help my father. When it is necessary to carry letters, to go to houses, to inquire from door to door, to find out an address, to follow any one, I am of service. Well, you may assuredly tell me what is the matter with you, and I will go and speak to the persons; sometimes it is enough if some one speaks to the persons, that suffices to let them understand matters, and everything comes right. Make use of me.”
An idea flashed across Marius’ mind. What branch does one disdain when one feels that one is falling?
He drew near to the Jondrette girl.
“Listen—” he said to her.
She interrupted him with a gleam of joy in her eyes.
“Oh yes, do call me thou! I like that better.”
“Well,” he resumed, “thou hast brought hither that old gentleman and his daughter!”
“Yes.”
“Dost thou know their address?”
“No.”
“Find it for me.”
The Jondrette’s dull eyes had grown joyous, and they now became gloomy.
“Is that what you want?” she demanded.
“Yes.”
“Do you know them?”
“No.”
“That is to say,” she resumed quickly, “you do not know her, but you wish to know her.”
This them which had turned into her had something indescribably significant and bitter about it.
“Well, can you do it?” said Marius.
“You shall have the beautiful lady’s address.”
There was still a shade in the words “the beautiful lady” which troubled Marius. He resumed:—
“Never mind, after all, the address of the father and daughter. Their address, indeed!”
She gazed fixedly at him.
“What will you give me?”
“Anything you like.”
“Anything I like?”
“Yes.”
“You shall have the address.”
She dropped her head; then, with a brusque movement, she pulled to the door, which closed behind her.
Marius found himself alone.
He dropped into a chair, with his head and both elbows on his bed, absorbed in thoughts which he could not grasp, and as though a prey to vertigo. All that had taken place since the morning, the appearance of the angel, her disappearance, what that creature had just said to him, a gleam of hope floating in an immense despair,—this was what filled his brain confusedly.
All at once he was violently aroused from his reverie.
He heard the shrill, hard voice of Jondrette utter these words, which were fraught with a strange interest for him:—
“I tell you that I am sure of it, and that I recognized him.”
Of whom was Jondrette speaking? Whom had he recognized? M. Leblanc? The father of “his Ursule”? What! Did Jondrette know him? Was Marius about to obtain in this abrupt and unexpected fashion all the information without which his life was so dark to him? Was he about to learn at last who it was that he loved, who that young girl was? Who her father was? Was the dense shadow which enwrapped them on the point of being dispelled? Was the veil about to be rent? Ah! Heavens!
He bounded rather than climbed upon his commode, and resumed his post near the little peep-hole in the partition wall.
Again he beheld the interior of Jondrette’s hovel.
Nothing in the aspect of the family was altered, except that the wife and daughters had levied on the package and put on woollen stockings and jackets. Two new blankets were thrown across the two beds.
Jondrette had evidently just returned. He still had the breathlessness of out of doors. His daughters were seated on the floor near the fireplace, the elder engaged in dressing the younger’s wounded hand. His wife had sunk back on the bed near the fireplace, with a face indicative of astonishment. Jondrette was pacing up and down the garret with long strides. His eyes were extraordinary.
The woman, who seemed timid and overwhelmed with stupor in the presence of her husband, turned to say:—
“What, really? You are sure?”
“Sure! Eight years have passed! But I recognize him! Ah! I recognize him. I knew him at once! What! Didn’t it force itself on you?”
“No.”
“But I told you: ‘Pay attention!’ Why, it is his figure, it is his face, only older,—there are people who do not grow old, I don’t know how they manage it,—it is the very sound of his voice. He is better dressed, that is all! Ah! you mysterious old devil, I’ve got you, that I have!”
He paused, and said to his daughters:—
“Get out of here, you!—It’s queer that it didn’t strike you!”
They arose to obey.
The mother stammered:—
“With her injured hand.”
“The air will do it good,” said Jondrette. “Be off.”
It was plain that this man was of the sort to whom no one offers to reply. The two girls departed.
At the moment when they were about to pass through the door, the father detained the elder by the arm, and said to her with a peculiar accent:—
“You will be here at five o’clock precisely. Both of you. I shall need you.”
Marius redoubled his attention.
On being left alone with his wife, Jondrette began to pace the room again, and made the tour of it two or three times in silence. Then he spent several minutes in tucking the lower part of the woman’s chemise which he wore into his trousers.
All at once, he turned to the female Jondrette, folded his arms and exclaimed:—
“And would you like to have me tell you something? The young lady—”
“Well, what?” retorted his wife, “the young lady?”
Marius could not doubt that it was really she of whom they were speaking. He listened with ardent anxiety. His whole life was in his ears.
But Jondrette had bent over and spoke to his wife in a whisper. Then he straightened himself up and concluded aloud:—
“It is she!”
“That one?” said his wife.
“That very one,” said the husband.
No expression can reproduce the significance of the mother’s words. Surprise, rage, hate, wrath, were mingled and combined in one monstrous intonation. The pronunciation of a few words, the name, no doubt, which her husband had whispered in her ear, had sufficed to rouse this huge, somnolent woman, and from being repulsive she became terrible.
“It is not possible!” she cried. “When I think that my daughters are going barefoot, and have not a gown to their backs! What! A satin pelisse, a velvet bonnet, boots, and everything; more than two hundred francs’ worth of clothes! so that one would think she was a lady! No, you are mistaken! Why, in the first place, the other was hideous, and this one is not so bad-looking! She really is not bad-looking! It can’t be she!”
“I tell you that it is she. You will see.”
At this absolute assertion, the Jondrette woman raised her large, red, blonde face and stared at the ceiling with a horrible expression. At that moment, she seemed to Marius even more to be feared than her husband. She was a sow with the look of a tigress.
“What!” she resumed, “that horrible, beautiful young lady, who gazed at my daughters with an air of pity,—she is that beggar brat! Oh! I should like to kick her stomach in for her!”
She sprang off of the bed, and remained standing for a moment, her hair in disorder, her nostrils dilating, her mouth half open, her fists clenched and drawn back. Then she fell back on the bed once more. The man paced to and fro and paid no attention to his female.
After a silence lasting several minutes, he approached the female Jondrette, and halted in front of her, with folded arms, as he had done a moment before:—
“And shall I tell you another thing?”
“What is it?” she asked.
He answered in a low, curt voice:—
“My fortune is made.”
The woman stared at him with the look that signifies: “Is the person who is addressing me on the point of going mad?”
He
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