Thenardier was the first to break the silence.
"How are you going to manage to get out?"
Jean Valjean made no reply.
Thenardier continued:
"It's impossible to pick the lock of that gate.
But still you must get out of this."
"That is true," said Jean Valjean.
"Well, half shares then."
"What do you mean by that?"
"You have killed that man; that's all right.
I have the key."
Thenardier pointed to Marius.
He went on:
"I don't know you, but I want to help you.
You must be a friend."
Jean Valjean began to comprehend.
Thenardier took him for an assassin.
Thenardier resumed:
"Listen, comrade.
You didn't kill that man without looking to see what he had in his pockets.
Give me my half.
I'll open the door for you."
And half drawing from beneath his tattered blouse a huge key, he added:
"Do you want to see how a key to liberty is made?
Look here."
Jean Valjean "remained stupid"--the expression belongs to the elder Corneille--to such a degree that he doubted whether what he beheld was real.
It was providence appearing in horrible guise, and his good angel springing from the earth in the form of Thenardier.
Thenardier thrust his fist into a large pocket concealed under his blouse, drew out a rope and offered it to Jean Valjean.
"Hold on," said he, "I'll give you the rope to boot."
"What is the rope for?"
"You will need a stone also, but you can find one outside. There's a heap of rubbish."
"What am I to do with a stone?"
"Idiot, you'll want to sling that stiff into the river, you'll need a stone and a rope, otherwise it would float on the water."
Jean Valjean took the rope.
There is no one who does not occasionally accept in this mechanical way.
Thenardier snapped his fingers as though an idea had suddenly occurred to him.
"Ah, see here, comrade, how did you contrive to get out of that slough yonder?
I haven't dared to risk myself in it.
Phew! you don't smell good."
After a pause he added:
"I'm asking you questions, but you're perfectly right not to answer. It's an apprenticeship against that cursed quarter of an hour before the examining magistrate.
And then, when you don't talk at all, you run no risk of talking too loud.
That's no matter, as I can't see your face and as I don't know your name, you are wrong in supposing that I don't know who you are and what you want.
I twig. You've broken up that gentleman a bit; now you want to tuck him away somewhere.
The river, that great hider of folly, is what you want. I'll get you out of your scrape.
Helping a good fellow in a pinch is what suits me to a hair."
While expressing his approval of Jean Valjean's silence, he endeavored to force him to talk.
He jostled his shoulder in an attempt to catch a sight of his profile, and he exclaimed, without, however, raising his tone:
"Apropos of that quagmire, you're a hearty animal.
Why didn't you toss the man in there?"
Jean Valjean preserved silence.
Thenardier resumed, pushing the rag which served him as a cravat to the level of his Adam's apple, a gesture which completes the capable air of a serious man:
"After all, you acted wisely.
The workmen, when they come to-morrow to stop up that hole, would certainly have found the stiff abandoned there, and it might have been possible, thread by thread, straw by straw, to pick up the scent and reach you.
Some one has passed through the sewer.
Who?
Where did he get out?
Was he seen to come out? The police are full of cleverness.
The sewer is treacherous and tells tales of you.
Such a find is a rarity, it attracts attention, very few people make use of the sewers for their affairs, while the river belongs to everybody.
The river is the true grave. At the end of a month they fish up your man in the nets at Saint-Cloud. Well, what does one care for that?
It's carrion! Who killed that man?
Paris.
And justice makes no inquiries. You have done well."
The more loquacious Thenardier became, the more mute was Jean Valjean.
Again Thenardier shook him by the shoulder.
"Now let's settle this business.
Let's go shares.
You have seen my key, show me your money."
Thenardier was haggard, fierce, suspicious, rather menacing, yet amicable.
There was one singular circumstance; Thenardier's manners were not simple; he had not the air of being wholly at his ease; while affecting an air of mystery, he spoke low; from time to time he laid his finger on his mouth, and muttered, "hush!"
It was difficult to divine why.
There was no one there except themselves. Jean Valjean thought that other ruffians might possibly be concealed in some nook, not very far off, and that Thenardier did not care to share with them.
Thenardier resumed:
"Let's settle up.
How much did the stiff have in his bags?"
Jean Valjean searched his pockets.
It was his habit, as the reader will remember, to always have some money about him.
The mournful life of expedients to which he had been condemned imposed this as a law upon him.
On this occasion, however, he had been caught unprepared.
When donning his uniform of a National Guardsman on the preceding evening, he had forgotten, dolefully absorbed as he was, to take his pocket-book. He had only some small change in his fob.
He turned out his pocket, all soaked with ooze, and spread out on the banquette of the vault one louis d'or, two five-franc pieces, and five or six large sous.
Thenardier thrust out his lower lip with a significant twist of the neck.
"You knocked him over cheap," said he.
He set to feeling the pockets of Jean Valjean and Marius, with the greatest familiarity.
Jean Valjean, who was chiefly concerned in keeping his back to the light, let him have his way.
While handling Marius' coat, Thenardier, with the skill of a pickpocket, and without being noticed by Jean Valjean, tore off a strip which he concealed under his blouse, probably thinking that this morsel of stuff might serve, later on, to identify the assassinated man and the assassin.
However, he found no more than the thirty francs.
"That's true," said he, "both of you together have no more than that."
And, forgetting his motto:
"half shares," he took all.
He hesitated a little over the large sous.
After due reflection, he took them also, muttering:
"Never mind!
You cut folks' throats too cheap altogether."
That done, he once more drew the big key from under his blouse.
"Now, my friend, you must leave.
It's like the fair here, you pay when you go out.
You have paid, now clear out."
And he began to laugh.
Had he, in lending to this stranger the aid of his key, and in making some other man than himself emerge from that portal, the pure and disinterested intention of rescuing an assassin? We may be permitted to doubt this.
Thenardier helped Jean Valjean to replace Marius on his shoulders, then he betook himself to the grating on tiptoe, and barefooted, making Jean Valjean a sign to follow him, looked out, laid his finger on his mouth, and remained for several seconds, as though in suspense; his inspection finished, he placed the key in the lock.
The bolt slipped back and the gate swung open.
It neither grated nor squeaked. It moved very softly.
It was obvious that this gate and those hinges, carefully oiled, were in the habit of opening more frequently than was supposed. This softness was suspicious; it hinted at furtive goings and comings, silent entrances and exits of nocturnal men, and the wolf-like tread of crime.
The sewer was evidently an accomplice of some mysterious band. This taciturn grating was a receiver of stolen goods.
Thenardier opened the gate a little way, allowing just sufficient space for Jean Valjean to pass out, closed the grating again, gave the key a double turn in the lock and plunged back into the darkness, without making any more noise than a breath. He seemed to walk with the velvet paws of a tiger.
A moment later, that hideous providence had retreated into the invisibility.
Jean Valjean found himself in the open air.
BOOK THIRD.--MUD BUT THE SOUL
CHAPTER IX
MARIUS PRODUCES ON SOME ONE WHO IS A JUDGE OF THE MATTER, THE EFFECT OF BEING DEAD
He allowed Marius to slide down upon the shore.
They were in the open air!
The miasmas, darkness, horror lay behind him.
The pure, healthful, living, joyous air that was easy to breathe inundated him. Everywhere around him reigned silence, but that charming silence when the sun has set in an unclouded azure sky.
Twilight had descended; night was drawing on, the great deliverer, the friend of all those who need a mantle of darkness that they may escape from an anguish. The sky presented itself in all directions like an enormous calm. The river flowed to his feet with the sound of a kiss.
The aerial dialogue of the nests bidding each other good night in the elms of the Champs-Elysees was audible.
A few stars, daintily piercing the pale blue of the zenith, and visible to revery alone, formed imperceptible little splendors amid the immensity.
Evening was unfolding over the head of Jean Valjean all the sweetness of the infinite.
It was that exquisite and undecided hour which says neither yes nor no. Night was already sufficiently advanced to render it possible to lose oneself at a little distance and yet there was sufficient daylight to permit of recognition at close quarters.
For several seconds, Jean Valjean was irresistibly overcome by that august and caressing serenity; such moments of oblivion do come to men; suffering refrains from harassing the unhappy wretch; everything is eclipsed in the thoughts; peace broods over the dreamer like night; and, beneath the twilight which beams and in imitation of the sky which is illuminated, the soul becomes studded with stars. Jean Valjean could not refrain from contemplating that vast, clear shadow which rested over him; thoughtfully he bathed in the sea of ecstasy and prayer in the majestic silence of the eternal heavens. Then he bent down swiftly to Marius, as though the sentiment of duty had returned to him, and, dipping up water in the hollow of his hand, he gently sprinkled a few drops on the latter's face. Marius' eyelids did not open; but his half-open mouth still breathed.
Jean Valjean was on the point of dipping his hand in the river once more, when, all at once, he experienced an indescribable embarrassment, such as a person feels when there is some one behind him whom he does not see.
We have already alluded to this impression, with which everyone is familiar.
He turned round.
Some one was, in fact, behind him, as there had been a short while before.
A man of lofty stature, enveloped in a long coat, with folded arms, and bearing in his right fist a bludgeon of which the leaden head was visible, stood a few paces in the rear of the spot where Jean Valjean was crouching over Marius.
With the aid of the darkness, it seemed a sort of apparition. An ordinary man would have been alarmed because of the twilight, a thoughtful man on account of the bludgeon.
Jean Valjean recognized Javert.
The reader has divined, no doubt, that Thenardier's pursuer was no other than Javert.
Javert, after his unlooked-for escape from the barricade, had betaken himself to the prefecture of police, had rendered a verbal account to the Prefect in person in a brief audience, had then immediately gone on duty again, which implied-- the note, the reader will recollect, which had been captured on his person--a certain surveillance of the shore on the right bank of the Seine near the Champs-Elysees, which had, for some time past, aroused the attention of the police.
There he had caught sight of Thenardier and had followed him.
The reader knows the rest.
Thus it will be easily understood that that grating, so obligingly opened to Jean Valjean, was a bit of cleverness on Thenardier's part. Thenardier intuitively felt that Javert was still there; the man spied upon has a scent which never deceives him; it was necessary to fling a bone to that sleuth-hound. An assassin, what a godsend!
Such an opportunity must never be allowed to slip.
Thenardier, by putting Jean Valjean outside in his stead, provided a prey for the police, forced them to relinquish his scent, made them forget him in a bigger adventure, repaid Javert for his waiting, which always flatters a spy, earned thirty francs, and counted with certainty, so far as he himself was concerned, on escaping with the aid of this diversion.
Jean Valjean had fallen from one danger upon another.
These two encounters, this falling one after the other, from Thenardier upon Javert, was a rude shock.
Javert did not recognize Jean Valjean, who, as we have stated, no longer looked like himself.
He did not unfold his arms, he made sure of his bludgeon in his fist, by an imperceptible movement, and said in a curt, calm voice:
"Who are you?"
"I."
"Who is `I'?"
"Jean Valjean."
Javert thrust his bludgeon between his teeth, bent his knees, inclined his body, laid his two powerful hands on the shoulders of Jean Valjean, which were clamped within them as in a couple of vices, scrutinized him, and recognized him.
Their faces almost touched. Javert's look was terrible.
Jean Valjean remained inert beneath Javert's grasp, like a lion submitting to the claws of a lynx.
"Inspector Javert," said he, "you have me in your power.
Moreover, I have regarded myself as your prisoner ever since this morning. I did not give you my address with any intention of escaping from you. Take me.
Only grant me one favor."
Javert did not appear to hear him.
He kept his eyes riveted on Jean Valjean.
His chin being contracted, thrust his lips upwards towards his nose, a sign of savage revery.
At length he released Jean Valjean, straightened himself stiffly up without bending, grasped his bludgeon again firmly, and, as though in a dream, he murmured rather than uttered this question:
