5 (7)
THE MAN RECRUITED IN THE RUE DES BILLETTES
IT WAS NOW QUITE DARK, nothing came. There were only faint sounds, and at intervals volleys of musketry; but infrequent, scattered, and distant. This respite, which was thus prolonged, was a sign that the government was taking its time, and massing its forces. These fifty men were awaiting sixty thousand.
Enjolras felt himself possessed by that impatience which seizes strong souls on the threshold of formidable events. He went to find Gavroche who had set himself to making cartridges in the basement room by the uncertain light of two candles placed upon the counter through precaution on account of the powder scattered over the tables. These two candles threw no rays outside. The insurgents moreover had taken care not to have any lights in the upper stories.
Gavroche at this moment was very much engaged, not exactly with his cartridges.
The man from the Rue des Billettes had just entered the basement room and had taken a seat at the table which was least lighted. An infantry musket of large model had fallen to his lot, and he held it between his knees. Gavroche hitherto, distracted by a hundred “amusing” things, had not even seen this man.
When he came in, Gavroche mechanically followed him with his eyes, admiring his musket, then, suddenly, when the man had sat down, the gamin arose. Had any one watched this man up to this time, he would have seen him observe everything in the barricade and in the band of insurgents with a singular attention; but since he had come into the room, he had fallen into a kind of meditation and appeared to see nothing more of what was going on. The gamin approached this thoughtful personage, and began to turn about him on the points of his toes as one walks when near somebody whom he fears to awake. At the same time, over his childish face, at once so saucy and so serious, so flighty and so profound, so cheerful and so touching, there passed all those grimaces of the old which signify: “Oh, bah! impossible! I’m seeing things! I am dreaming! can it be? no, it isn‘t! why yes! why no!” etc. Gavroche swayed upon his heels, clenched both fists in his pockets, twisted his neck like a bird, expended in one measureless pout all the sagacity of his lower lip. He was stupefied, uncertain, credulous, convinced, bewildered. He had the appearance of the chief of the eunuchs in the slave market discovering a Venus among fatties, and the air of an amateur recognising a Raphael in a heap of daubs. Everything in him was at work, the instinct which scents and the intellect which combines. It was evident that an event had occurred with Gavroche.
It was in the deepest of this meditation that Enjolras accosted him.
“You are small,” said Enjolras, “nobody will see you. Go out of the barricades, glide along by the houses, look about the streets a little, and come and tell me what is going on.”
Gavroche straightened himself up.
“Little folks are good for something then! that is very lucky! I will go! meantime, trust the little folks, distrust the big—” And Gavroche, raising his head and lowering his voice, added, pointing to the man of the Rue des Billettes:
“You see that big fellow there?”
“Well?”
“He is a spy.”
“You are sure?”
“It isn’t a fortnight since he pulled me by the ear off the cornice of the Pont Royal where I was taking the air.”
Enjolras hastily left the gamin, and murmured a few words very low to a working-man from the wine docks who was there. The working-man went out of the room and returned almost immediately, accompanied by three others. The four men, four broad-shouldered porters, placed themselves, without doing anything which could attract his attention, behind the table on which the man of the Rue des Billettes was leaning. They were evidently ready to throw themselves upon him.
Then Enjolras approached the man and asked him:
“Who are you?”
At this abrupt question, the man gave a start. He looked straight to the bottom of Enjolras’ frank eye and appeared to catch his thought. He smiled with a smile which, of all things in the world, was the most disdainful, the most energetic, and the most resolute, and answered with a haughty gravity:
“I see how it is—Well, yes!”
“You are a spy?”
“I am an officer of the government.”
“Your name is?”
“Javert.”
Enjolras made a sign to the four men. In a twinkling, before Javert had had time to turn around, he was collared, thrown down, bound, searched.
They found upon him a little round card framed between two glasses, and bearing on one side the arms of France, engraved with this legend: Surveillance et vigilance, and on the other side this endorsement: JAVERT, inspector of police, aged fifty-two, and the signature of the prefect of police of the time, M. Gisquet.
He had besides his watch and his purse, which contained a few gold coins. They left him his purse and his watch. Under the watch, at the bottom of his fob, they felt and seized a paper in an envelope, which Enjolras opened, and on which he read these six lines, written by the prefect’s own hand.
“As soon as his political mission is fulfilled, Inspector Javert will ascertain, by a special examination, whether it be true that malefactors have hideouts on the slope of the right bank of the Seine, near the bridge of Jena.”
The search finished, they raised Javert, tied his arms behind his back, fastened him in the middle of the basement-room to that celebrated post which had formerly given its name to the tavern.
Gavroche, who had witnessed the whole scene and approved the whole by silent nods of his head, approached Javert and said to him:
“The mouse has caught the cat.”
All this was executed so rapidly that it was finished as soon as it was perceived about the tavern. Javert had not uttered a cry. Seeing Javert tied to the post, Courfeyrac, Bossuet, Joly, Combeferre, and the men scattered about the two barricades, ran in.
Javert, backed up against the post, and so surrounded with ropes that he could make no movement, held up his head with the intrepid serenity of the man who has never lied.
“It is a spy,” said Enjolras.
And turning towards Javert:
“You will be shot ten minutes before the barricade is taken.”
Javert replied in his most imperious tone:
“Why not immediately?”
“We are economising powder.”
“Then do it with a knife.”
“Spy,” said the handsome Enjolras, “we are judges, not assassins.”
Then he called Gavroche.
“You! go about your business! Do what I told you.”
“I am going,” cried Gavroche.
And stopping just as he was starting:
“By the way, you will give me his musket!” And he added: “I leave you the musician, but I want the clarionet.”
The gamin made a military salute, and sprang gaily through the opening in the large barricade.