8

THE TORN COAT-TAIL

IN THE MIDST of this annihilation, a hand was laid upon his shoulder, and a voice which spoke low, said to him:

“Go halves.”

Somebody in that darkness? Nothing is so like a dream as despair, Jean Valjean thought he was dreaming. He had heard no steps. Was it possible? he raised his eyes.

A man was before him.

This man was dressed in a smock; he was barefooted; he held his shoes in his left hand; he had evidently taken them off to be able to reach Jean Valjean without being heard.

Jean Valjean had not a moment’s hesitation. Unforeseen as was the encounter, this man was known to him. This man was Thénardier.

Although wakened, so to speak, with a start, Jean Valjean, accustomed to be on the alert and on the watch for unexpected blows which he must quickly parry, instantly regained possession of all his presence of mind. Besides, the condition of affairs could not be worse, a certain degree of distress is no longer capable of crescendo, and Thénardier himself could not add to the blackness of this night.

There was a moment of delay.

Thénardier, lifting his right hand to the height of his forehead, shaded his eyes with it, then brought his brows together while he winked his eyes, which, with a slight pursing of the mouth, characterises the sagacious attention of a man who is seeking to recognise another. He did not succeed. Jean Valjean, we have just said, turned his back to the light, and was moreover so disfigured, so muddy and so blood-stained, that in full noon he would have been unrecognisable. On the other hand, with the light from the grating shining in his face, a cellar light, it is true, livid, but precise in its lividness, Thénardier, as the energetic, trite metaphor expresses it, struck Jean Valjean at once. This inequality of conditions was enough to insure Jean Valjean some advantage in this mysterious duel which was about to open between the two conditions and the two men. The encounter took place between Jean Valjean veiled and Thénardier unmasked.

Jean Valjean perceived immediately that Thénardier did not recognise him.

They gazed at each other for a moment in this penumbra, as if they were taking each other’s measure. Thénardier was first to break the silence.

“How are you going to manage to get out?”

Jean Valjean did not answer.

Thénardier continued:

“Impossible to pick the lock. Still you must get away from here.”

“That is true,” said Jean Valjean.

“Well, go halves.”

“What do you mean?”

“You have killed the man; very well. Me, I have the key.”

Thénardier pointed to Marius. He went on:

“I don’t know you, but I would like to help you. You must be a friend.”

Jean Valjean began to understand. Thenardier took him for an assassin.

Thénardier resumed:

“Listen, comrade. You haven’t killed that man without looking to what he had in his pockets. Give me my half. I will open the door for you.”

And, drawing a big key half out from under his smock, which was full of holes, he added:

“Would you like to see what freedom looks like?^gu There it is.”

Jean Valjean “remained stupid,” the expression is the elder Corneille‘s, so far as to doubt whether what he saw was real. It was Providence appearing in a guise of horror, and the good angel springing out of the ground under the form of Thénardier.

Thénardier plunged his fist into a huge pocket hidden under his smock, pulled out a rope, and handed it to Jean Valjean.

“Here,” said he, “I’ll give you the rope to boot.”

“A rope, what for?”

“You want a stone too, but you’ll find one outside. There is a heap of rubbish there.”

“A stone, what for?”

“Fool, as you are going to throw the stiff into the river, you want a stone and a rope; without them it would float on the water.”

Jean Valjean took the rope. Everybody has accepted things thus mechanically.

Thénardier snapped his fingers as over the arrival of a sudden idea:

“Ah now, comrade, how did you manage to get out of the quagmire yonder? I haven’t dared to risk myself there. Peugh! you don’t smell good.”

After a pause, he added:

“I ask you questions, but you are right in not answering them. That is an apprenticeship for the examining judge’s cursed quarter of an hour. And then by not speaking at all, you run no risk of speaking too loud. It is all the same, because I don’t see your face, and because I don’t know your name, you would do wrong to suppose that I don’t know who you are and what you want. Understood. You have smashed this gentleman a little; now you want to stow him somewhere. You need the river, the great hide-folly. I am going to get you out of the scrape. To help a good fellow in trouble, that’s what I like.”^gv

While approving Jean Valjean for keeping silence, he was evidently seeking to make him speak. He pushed his shoulders, so as to endeavour to see his profile, and exclaimed, without however rising above a moderate tone:

“Speaking of the quagmire, you are a proud animal. Why didn’t you throw the man in there?”

Jean Valjean preserved silence.

Thénardier resumed, raising the rag which served him as a cravat up to his Adam’s apple, a gesture which completes the air of sagacity of a serious man:

“Indeed, perhaps you have acted prudently. The workmen when they come to-morrow to stop the hole, would certainly have found the dummy forgotten there, and they would have been able, thread by thread, straw by straw, to find the trace, and to get to you. Something has passed through the sewer? Who? Where did he come out? Did anybody see him come out? The police has plenty of brains. The sewer is treacherous and informs against you. Such a discovery is a rarity, it attracts attention, few people use the sewer in their business while the river is at everybody’s service. The river is the true grave. At the month’s end, they fish you up the man at the nets of Saint Cloud. Well, what does that amount to? It is a carcass, indeed! Who killed this man? Paris. And justice don’t even inquire into it. You have done right.”

The more loquacious Thénardier was, the more dumb was Jean Valjean. Thénardier pushed his shoulder anew.

“Now, let us finish the business. Let us divide. You have seen my key, show me your money.”

Thénardier was haggard, savage, shady, a little threatening, nevertheless friendly.

There was one strange circumstance; Thénardier’s manner was not natural; he did not appear entirely at his ease; while he did not affect an air of mystery, he talked low; from time to time he laid his finger on his mouth, and muttered: “Hush!” It was difficult to guess why. There was nobody there but them. Jean Valjean thought that perhaps some other bandits were hidden in some recess not far off, and that Thénardier did not care to share with them.

Thénardier resumed:

“Let us finish. How much did the stiff have in his deeps?”

Jean Valjean felt in his pockets.

It was, as will be remembered, his custom always to have money about him. The gloomy life of expedients to which he was condemned, made this a law to him. This time, however, he was caught unprepared. On putting on his National Guard’s uniform, the evening before, he had forgotten, gloomily absorbed as he was, to take his pocket-book with him. He had only some coins in his waistcoat pocket. He turned out his pocket, all soaked with filth, and displayed upon the curb of the sewer a louis d‘or, two five-franc coins, and five or six big sous.

Thénardier thrust out his under lip with a significant twist of the neck.

“You didn’t kill him very dear,” said he.

He began to handle, in all familiarity, the pockets of Jean Valjean and Marius. Jean Valjean, principally concerned in keeping his back to the light, did not interfere with him. While he was feeling of Marius’ coat, Thénardier, with the dexterity of a juggler, found means, without attracting Jean Valjean’s attention, to tear off a strip, which he hid under his smock, probably thinking that this scrap of cloth might assist him afterwards to identify the assassinated man and the assassin. He found, however, nothing more than the thirty francs.

“It is true,” said he, “both together, you have no more than that.”

And, forgetting his words, go halves, he took the whole.

He hesitated a little before the big sous. Upon reflection, he took them also, mumbling:

“No matter! this is sticking people too cheap.”

This said, he took the key from under his smock anew.

“Now, friend, you must go out. This is like the fair, you pay on going out. You have paid, go out.”

And he began to laugh.

That he had, in extending to an unknown man the help of this key, and in causing another man than himself to go out by this door, the pure and disinterested intention of saving an assassin, is something which it is permissible to doubt.

Thénardier helped Jean Valjean to replace Marius upon his shoulders; then he went towards the grating upon the points of his bare feet, beckoning to Jean Valjean to follow him, he looked outside, laid his finger on his mouth, and stood a few seconds as if in suspense; the inspection over, he put the key into the lock. The bolt slid and the door turned. There was neither snapping nor grinding. It was done very quietly. It was plain that this grating and its hinges, oiled with care, were opened oftener than would have been guessed. This quiet was ominous; you felt in it the furtive goings and comings, the silent entrances and exits of the men of the night, and the wolf-like tread of crime. The sewer was evidently in complicity with some mysterious band. This taciturn grating harboured fugitives from justice.^gw

Thénardier half opened the door, left just enough room for Jean Valjean, closed the grating again, turned the key twice in the lock, and plunged back into the darkness, without making more noise than a breath. He seemed to walk with the velvet paws of a tiger. A moment afterwards, this hideous providence had entered again into the invisible.

Jean Valjean found himself outside.