3
THE FORTUNES AND MISFORTUNES OF ESCAPE
WHAT HAD TAKEN PLACE that same night at La Force was this:
An escape had been concerted between Babet, Brujon, Gueulemer, and Thénardier, although Thénardier was in solitary. Babet had done the business for himself during the day, as we have seen from the account of Montparnasse to Gavroche. Montparnasse was to help them from without.
Brujon, having spent a month in solitary, had had time, first, to twist a rope, secondly, to perfect a plan. Formerly these grim cells, in which prison discipline delivers the condemned to himself, were composed of four stone walls, a stone ceiling, a floor of paving-stones, a camp bed, a grated air-hole, a door reinforced with iron, and were called dungeons; but the dungeon came to be thought too horrible: today it is composed of an iron door, a grated air-hole, a camp bed, a floor of paving-stones, a stone ceiling, four stone walls, and it is called a punitive detention cell. There is little light in them even at noon. The disadvantage of these rooms which, as we see, are not dungeons, is that they allow beings to reflect who should be made to work.
Brujon then had reflected, and he had left his punitive detention cell with a rope. As he was reputed very dangerous in the Charlemagne Court, he was put into the Bâtiment Neuf. The first thing which he found in the Bâtiment Neuf was Gueulemer, the second was a nail; Gueulemer, that is to say crime, a nail, that is to say liberty.
Brujon, of whom it is time to give a complete idea, was, with an appearance of delicate complexion and a profoundly premeditated languor, a polished, gallant, intelligent robber, with an enticing look and a horrible smile. His look was a result of his will, and his smile of his nature. His first studies in his art were directed towards roofs; he had made a great improvement in the business of the lead strippers who strip roofing and tear off gutters by the process called: the double membrane.
What rendered the moment peculiarly favourable for an attempt at escape, was that some workmen were taking off and relaying, at that very time, a part of the slating of the prison. The Cour Saint Bernard was not entirely isolated from the Charlemagne Court and the Cour Saint Louis. There were scaffoldings and ladders up aloft; in other words, bridges and stairways leading towards deliverance.
Bâtiment Neuf, the most cracked and decrepit affair in the world, was the weak point of the prison. The walls were so much corroded by saltpetre that they had been obliged to put a facing of wood over the arches of the dormitories, because the stones detached themselves and fell upon the beds of the prisoners. Notwithstanding this decay, the blunder was committed of shutting up in the Bâtiment Neuf the most dangerous of the accused, of putting “the hard cases” in there, as they say in prison language.
The Bâtiment Neuf contained four dormitories one above the other and an attic which was called the Bel Air. A large chimney, probably of some ancient kitchen of the Dukes de La Force, started from the ground floor, passed through the four stories, cutting in two all the dormitories in which it appeared to be a kind of flattened pillar, and went out through the roof.
Gueulemer and Brujon were in the same dormitory. They had been put into the lower story by precaution. It happened that the heads of their beds rested against the flue of the chimney.
Thénardier was exactly above them in the attic known as the Bel Air.
The passer-by who stops in the Rue Culture Sainte Catherine beyond the barracks of the firemen, in front of the porte-cochère of the bath-house, sees a yard full of flowers and shrubs in boxes, at the further end of which is a little white rotunda with two wings enlivened by green blinds, the bucolic dream of Jean Jacques. Not more than ten years ago, above this rotunda there arose a black wall, enormous, hideous, and bare, against which it was built. This was the encircling wall of La Force.
This wall, behind this rotunda, was Milton seen behind Berquin. eq
High as it was, this wall was over-topped by a still blacker roof which could be seen behind. This was the roof of the Bâtiment Neuf. You noticed in it four dormer windows with gratings; these were the windows of the Bel Air. A chimney pierced the roof, the chimney which passed through the dormitories.
The Bel Air, this attic of the Bâtiment Neuf, was a kind of large garret hall, closed with triple gratings and double sheet iron doors studded with monstrous nails. Entering at the north end, you had on your left the four windows, and on your right, opposite the windows, four large square cages, with spaces between, separated by narrow passages, built breast-high of masonry with bars of iron to the roof.
Thénardier had been in solitary in one of these cages since the night of the 3rd of February. Nobody has ever discovered how, or by what contrivance, he had succeeded in procuring and hiding a bottle of that wine invented, it is said, by Desrues, with which a narcotic is mixed, and which the band of the Endormeurs has rendered celebrated.
There are in many prisons treacherous employees, half jailers and half thieves, who aid in escapes, who sell a faithless service to the police, and who make much more than their salary.
On this same night, then, on which little Gavroche had picked up the two wandering children, Brujon and Gueulemer, knowing that Babet, who had escaped that very morning, was waiting for them in the street as well as Montparnasse, got up softly and began to pierce the flue of the chimney which touched their beds with the nail which Brujon had found. The fragments fell upon Brujon’s bed, so that nobody heard them. The hail storm and the thunder shook the doors upon their hinges, and made a frightful and convenient uproar in the prison. Those of the prisoners who awoke made a feint of going to sleep again, and let Gueulemer and Brujon alone. Brujon was adroit; Gueulemer was vigorous. Before any sound had reached the watchman who was lying in the grated cell with a window opening into the sleeping room, the wall was pierced, the chimney scaled, the iron trellis which closed the upper orifice of the flue forced, and the two formidable bandits were upon the roof. The rain and the wind redoubled, the roof was slippery.
“What a good sorgue for a crampe,”er said Brujon.
A gulf of six feet wide and eighty feet deep separated them from the encircling wall. At the bottom of this gulf they saw a sentinel’s musket gleaming in the darkness. They fastened one end of the rope which Brujon had woven in his cell, to the stumps of the bars of the chimney which they had just twisted off, threw the other end over the encircling wall, cleared the gulf at a bound, clung to the coping of the wall, bestrode it, let themselves glide one after the other down along the rope upon a little roof which adjoined the bath-house, pulled down their rope, leaped into the bath-house yard, crossed it, pushed open the porter’s transom, near which hung the cord, pulled the cord, opened the porte-cochère, and were in the street.
It was not three-quarters of an hour since they had risen to their feet on their beds in the darkness, their nail in hand, their project in their heads.
A few moments afterwards they had rejoined Babet and Montparnasse, who were prowling about the neighbourhood.
In drawing down their rope, they had broken it, and there was a piece remaining fastened to the chimney on the roof. They had received no other damage than having pretty thoroughly skinned their hands.
That night Thénardier had received a warning, it never could be ascertained in what manner, and did not go to sleep.
About one o‘clock in the morning, the night being very dark, he saw two shadows passing on the roof, in the rain and in the raging wind, before the window opposite his cage. One stopped at the window long enough for a look. It was Brujon. Thénardier recognised him, and understood. That was enough for him. Thénardier, described as an assassin, and detained under the charge of lying in wait by night with force and arms, was kept constantly in sight. A sentinel, who was relieved every two hours, marched with loaded gun before his cage. The Bel Air was lighted by a reflector. The prisoner had irons on his feet weighing fifty pounds. Every day, at four o’clock in the afternoon, a warden, escorted by two dogs—this was customary at that period—entered his cage, laid down near his bed a two pound loaf of black bread, a jug of water, and a dish full of very thin soup in which a few beans were swimming, examined his irons, and struck upon the bars. This man, with his dogs, returned twice in the night.
Thénardier had obtained permission to keep a kind of an iron spike which he used to nail his bread into a crack in the wall, “in order,” said he, “to preserve it from the rats.” As Thénardier was constantly in sight, they imagined no danger from this spike. However, it was remembered afterwards that a warden had said: “It would be better to let him have nothing but a wooden pike.”
At two o‘clock in the morning, the sentinel, who was an old soldier, was relieved, and his place was taken by a conscript. A few moments afterwards, the man with the dogs made his visit, and went away without noticing anything, except the extreme youth and the “peasant air” of the “greenhorn.” Two hours afterwards, at four o’clock, when they came to relieve the conscript, they found him asleep, and lying on the ground like a log near Thénardier’s cage. As to Thénardier, he was not there. His broken irons were on the floor. There was a hole in the ceiling of his cage, and above, another hole in the roof A board had been torn from his bed, and doubtless carried away, for it was not found again. There was also seized in the cell a half empty bottle, containing the rest of the drugged wine with which the soldier had been put to sleep. The soldier’s bayonet had disappeared.
At the moment of this discovery, it was supposed that Thénardier was out of all reach. The reality is, that he was no longer in the Bâtiment Neuf, but that he was still in great danger.
Thénardier on reaching the roof of the Bâtiment Neuf, found the remnant of Brujon’s cord hanging to the bars of the upper trap of the chimney, but this broken end being much too short, he was unable to escape over the sentry’s path as Brujon and Gueulemer had done.
On turning from the Rue des Ballets into the Rue du Roi de Sicile, on the right you meet almost immediately with a dirty recess. There was a house there in the last century, of which only the rear wall remains, a genuine ruin wall which rises to the height of the third story among the neighbouring buildings. This ruin can be recognised by two large square windows which may still be seen; the one in the middle, nearer the right gable, is crossed by a worm-eaten joist fitted like a cap-piece for a brace. Through these windows could formerly be discerned a high and dismal wall, which was a part of the encircling wall of La Force.
The void which the demolished house left upon the street is half filled by a palisade fence of rotten boards, supported by five stone posts. Hidden in this inclosure is a little shanty built against that part of the ruin which remains standing. The fence has a gate which a few years ago was fastened only by a latch.
Thénardier was upon the crest of this ruin a little after three o‘clock in the morning.
How had he got there? That is what nobody has ever been able to explain or understand. The lightning must have both confused and helped him. Did he use the ladders and the scaffoldings of the slaters to get from roof to roof, from inclosure to inclosure, from compartment to compartment, to the buildings of the Charlemagne court, then the buildings of the Cour Saint Louis, the encircling wall, and from thence to the ruin on the Rue du Roi de Sicile? But there were gaps in this route which seemed to render it impossible. Did he lay down the plank from his bed as a bridge from the roof of the Bel Air to the encircling wall, and did he crawl on his belly along the coping of the wall, all round the prison as far as the ruin? But the encircling wall of La Force followed an indented and uneven line, it rose and fell, it sank down to the barracks of the firemen, it rose up to the bathing-house, it was cut by buildings, it was not of the same height on the Hotel Lamoignon as on the Rue Pavée, it had slopes and right angles everywhere; and then the sentinels would have seen the dark outline of the fugitive; on this supposition again, the route taken by Thénardier is still almost inexplicable. By either way, an impossible flight. Had Thénardier, illuminated by that fearful thirst for liberty which changes precipices into ditches, iron gratings into osier screens, a cripple into an athlete, an old gouty person into a bird, stupidity into instinct, instinct into intelligence, and intelligence into genius, had Thénardier invented and extemporised a third method? It has never been discovered.
One cannot always comprehend the marvels of escape. The man who escapes, let us repeat, is inspired; there is something of the star and the lightning in the mysterious gleam of flight; the effort towards deliverance is not less surprising than the flight towards the sublime; and we say of an escaped robber: How did he manage to scale that roof? just as it is said of Corneille: Where did he learn that he would die?
However this may be, dripping with sweat, soaked through by the rain, his clothes in strips, his hands skinned, his elbows bleeding, his knees torn, Thénardier had reached what children, in their figurative language, call the cutting edge of the wall of the ruin, he had stretched himself on it at full length, and there his strength failed him. A steep escarpment, three stories high, separated him from the pavement of the street.
The rope which he had was too short.
He was waiting there, pale, exhausted, having lost all the hope which he had had, still covered by night, but saying to himself that day was just about to dawn, dismayed at the idea of hearing in a few moments the neighbouring clock of Saint Paul’s strike four, the hour when they would come to relieve the sentinel and would find him asleep under the broken roof, gazing with a kind of stupor through the fearful depth, by the glimmer of the lamps, upon the wet and black pavement, that longed for yet terrible pavement which was death yet which was liberty.
He asked himself if his three accomplices in escape had succeeded, if they had heard him, and if they would come to his aid. He listened. Except a patrolman, nobody had passed through the street since he had been there. Nearly all the travel of the gardeners of Montreuil Charonne, Vin cennes, and Bercy to the Market, is through the Rue Saint Antoine.
The clock struck four. Thénardier shuddered. A few moments afterwards, that wild and confused noise which follows upon the discovery of an escape, broke out in the prison. The sounds of doors opening and shutting, the grinding of gratings upon their hinges, the tumult in the guard-house, the harsh calls of the gate-keepers, the sound of the butts of muskets upon the pavement of the yards reached him. Lights moved up and down in the grated windows of the dormitories, a torch ran along the attic of the Bâtiment Neuf, the firemen of the barracks alongside had been called. Their caps, which the torches lighted up in the rain, were going to and fro along the roofs. At the same time Thénardier saw in the direction of the Bastille a whitish tint throwing a dismal pallor over the lower part of the sky.
He was on the top of a wall ten inches wide, stretched out beneath the storm, with two precipices, at the right and at the left, unable to stir, giddy at the prospect of falling, and horror-stricken at the certainty of arrest, and his thoughts, like the pendulum of a clock, went from one of these ideas to the other: “Dead if I fall, taken if I stay.”
In this anguish, he suddenly saw, the street being still wrapped in darkness, a man who was gliding along the walls, and who came from the direction of the Rue Pavée, stop in the recess above which Thénardier was as it were suspended. This man was joined by a second, who was walking with the same precaution, then by a third, then by a fourth. When these men were together, one of them lifted the latch of the gate in the fence, and they all four entered the inclosure of the shanty. They were exactly under Thénardier. These men had evidently selected this recess so as to be able to talk without being seen by the passers-by or by the sentinel who guards the gate of La Force a few steps off. It must also be stated that the rain kept this sentinel blockaded in his sentry-box. Thénardier, not being able to distinguish their faces, listened to their words with the desperate attention of a wretch who feels that he is lost.
Something which resembled hope passed before Thénardier’s eyes; these men spoke argot.
The first said, in a low voice, but distinctly:
“Décarrons. What is it we maquillons icigo?”es
The second answered:
“Il lansquine enough to put out the riffe of the rabouin. And then the coqueurs are going by, there is a grivier there who carries a gaffe, shall we let them emballer us icicaille?”et
These are two words, icigo and icicaille, which both mean ici [here], and which belong, the first to the argot of the Barrières, the second to the argot of the Temple, were revelations to Thénardier. By icigo he recognised Brujon, who was a prowler of the Barrières, and by icicaille Babet, who, among all his other trades, had been a second-hand dealer at the Temple.
The ancient argot of the age of Louis XIV, is now spoken only at the Temple, and Babet was the only one who spoke it quite purely. Without icicaille, Thenardier would not have recognised him, for he had entirely disguised his voice.
Meanwhile the third put in a word:
“Nothing is urgent yet, let us wait a little. How do we know that he doesn’t need our help?”
By this, which was only French, Thénardier recognised Montparnasse, whose elegance consisted in understanding all argots and speaking none.
As to the fourth, he was silent, but his huge shoulders betrayed him. Thénardier had no hesitation. It was Gueulemer.
Brujon replied almost impetuously, but still in a low voice:
“What is it you bonnez us there? The tapissier couldn’t draw his crampe. He don’t know the trus, indeed! Bouliner his limace and faucher his empaffes, maquiller a tortouse, caler boulins in the lourdes, braser the taffes, maquiller caroubles, faucher the Bards, balance his tortouse outside, panquer himself, camoufler himself, one must be a mariol? The old man couldn’t do it, he don’t know how to goupiner! ”eu
Babet added, still in that prudent, classic argot which was spoken by Poulailler and Cartouche, and which is to the bold, new, strongly-coloured, and hazardous argot which Brujon used, what the language of Racine is to the language of André Chénier:
“Your orgue tapissier must have been made marron on the stairs. One must be arcasien. He is a galifard. He has been played the harnache by a roussin, perhaps even by a roussi, who has beaten him comtois. Lend your oche, Montparnasse, do you hear those criblements in the college? You have seen all those camoufles. He has tombé, come! He must be left to draw his twenty longes. I have no taf, I am no taffeur, that is colombé, but there is nothing more but to make the lezards, or otherwise they will make us gambiller for it. Don’t renauder, come with nousiergue. Let us go and picter a rouillarde encible.“ev
“Friends are not left in difficulty,” muttered Montparnasse.
“I bonnis you that he is malade,” replied Brujon. “At the hour which toque, the tapissier isn’t worth a broque! We can do nothing here. Décarrons. I expect every moment that a cogne will cintrer me in pogne!”ew
Montparnasse resisted now but feebly; the truth is, that these four men, with that faithfulness which bandits exhibit in never abandoning each other, had been prowling all night about La Force at whatever risk, in hope of seeing Thénardier rise above some wall. But the night which was becoming really too fine, it was storming enough to keep all the streets empty, the cold which was growing upon them, their soaked clothing, their wet shoes, the alarming uproar which had just broken out in the prison, the passing hours, the patrolmen they had met, hope departing, fear returning, all this impelled them to retreat. Montparnasse himself, who was, perhaps, to some slight extent a son-in-law of Thénardier, yielded. A moment more, they were gone. Thénardier gasped upon his wall like the shipwrecked sailors of the Méduse on their raft when they saw the ship which had appeared, vanish in the horizon.
He dared not call them, a cry overheard might destroy all; he had an idea, a final one, a flash of light; 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 into the inclosure.
This rope fell at their feet.
“A widow! ”ex said Babet.
“My tortouse!”ey said Brujon.
“There is the innkeeper,” said Montparnasse.
They raised their eyes. Thénardier advanced his head a little.
“Quick!” said Montparnasse, “have you the other end of the rope, Brujon?”
“Yes.”
“Tie the two ends together, we will throw him the rope, he will fasten it to the wall, he will have enough to get down.”
Thénardier ventured to speak:
“I am benumbed.”
“We will warm you.”
“I can’t stir.”
“Let yourself slip down, we will catch you.”
“My hands are stiff.”
“Only tie the rope to the wall.”
“I can’t.”
“One of us must get up,” said Montparnasse.
“Three stories!” said Brujon.
An old plaster flue, which had served for a stove which had formerly been in use in the shanty, crept along the wall, rising almost to the spot at which they saw Thénardier. This flue, then very much cracked and full of seams, has since fallen, but its traces can still be seen. It was very small.
“We could get up by that,” said Montparnasse.
“By that flue!” exclaimed Babet, “an orgue,ez never! it would take a mion.”fa
“It would take a môme,”fb added Brujon.
“Where can we find a brat?” said Gueulemer.
“Wait,” said Montparnasse, “I have the thing.”
He opened the gate of the fence softly, made sure that nobody was passing in the street, went out carefully, shut the door after him, and started on a run in the direction of the Bastille.
Seven or eight minutes elapsed, eight thousand centuries to Thénardier; Babet, Brujon, and Gueulemer kept their teeth clenched; the door at last opened again, and Montparnasse appeared, out of breath, with Gavroche. The rain still kept the street entirely empty.
Little Gavroche entered the inclosure and looked upon these bandit forms with a quiet air. The water was dripping from his hair. Gueulemer addressed him:
“Brat, are you a man?”
Gavroche shrugged his shoulders and answered:
“A môme like mézig is an orgue, and orgues like vousailles are mômes.”fc
“How the mion plays with the spittoon!”fd exclaimed Babet.
“The môme pantinois isn’t maquillé of fertille lansquinée,”fe added Brujon.
“What is it you want?” said Gavroche.
Montparnasse answered:
“To climb up by this flue.”
“With this widow,”ff said Babet.
“And ligoter the tortouse,”fg continued Brujon.
“To the monté of the montant,”fh resumed Babet.
“To the pieu of the vanterne,”fi added Brujon.
“And then?” said Gavroche.
“That’s it!” said Gueulemer.
The gamin examined the rope, the flue, the wall, the windows, and made that inexpressible and disdainful sound with the lips which signifies:
“That’s all?”
“There is a man up there whom you will save,” replied Montparnasse.
“Will you?” added Brujon.
“Goosy!” answered the child, as if the question appeared to him absurd; and he took off his shoes.
Gueulemer caught up Gavroche with one hand, put him on the roof of the shanty, the worm-eaten boards of which bent beneath the child’s weight, and handed him the rope which Brujon had tied together during the absence of Montparnasse. The gamin went towards the flue, which it was easy to enter, thanks to a large hole at the roof. Just as he was about to start, Thénardier, who saw safety and life approaching, bent over the edge of the wall; the first gleam of day lighted up his forehead reeking with sweat, his livid cheeks, his thin and savage nose, his grey bristly beard, and Gavroche recognised him:
“Hold on!” said he, “it is my father!—Well, that don’t hinder!”
And taking the rope in his teeth, he resolutely commenced the ascent.
He reached the top of the ruin, bestrode the old wall like a horse, and tied the rope firmly to the upper cross-bar of the window.
A moment afterwards Thénardier was in the street.
As soon as he had touched the pavement, as soon as he felt himself out of danger, he was no longer either fatigued, benumbed, or trembling; the terrible things through which he had passed vanished like a whiff of smoke, all that strange and ferocious intellect awoke, and found itself erect and free, ready to march forward. The man’s first words were these:
“Now, who are we going to eat?”
It is needless to explain the meaning of this frightfully transparent word, which signifies all at once to kill, to assassinate, and to plunder. Eat, real meaning: devour.
“Let us hide first,” said Brujon, “finish in three words and we will separate immediately. There was an affair which had a good look in the Rue Plumet, a deserted street, an isolated house, an old rusty grating upon a garden, some lone women.”
“Well, why not?” inquired Thénardier.
“Your féefj Eponine, has been to see the thing,” answered Babet.
“And she brought a biscuit to Magnon,” added Gueulemer, “nothing to maquiller there.”fk
“The fée isn’t loffe,”fl said Thénardier. “Still we must see.”
“Yes, yes,” said Brujon, “we must see.”
Meantime none of these men appeared longer to see Gavroche who, during this colloquy, had seated himself upon one of the stone supports of the fence; he waited a few minutes, perhaps for his father to turn towards him, then he put on his shoes, and said:
“It is over? you have no more use for me? men! you are out of your trouble. I am going. I must go and get my mômes up.”
And he went away.
The five men went out of the inclosure one after another.
When Gavroche had disappeared at the turn of the Rue des Ballets, Babet took Thénardier aside.
“Did you notice that mion?” he asked him.
“What mion?”
“The mion who climbed up the wall and brought you the rope.”
“Not much.”
“Well, I don’t know, but it seems to me that it is your son.”
“Pshaw!” said Thénardier, “do you think so?”
 

 

 

 

[Book Seven “Argot (On Slang),” does not appear in this abridged edition.]