Les miserables (Abridged) - Victor Hugo [267]
“Impossible!” she exclaimed, “when I think that my daughters go barefoot and have not a dress to put on! What! a satin pelisse, a velvet hat, buskins, and all! more than two hundred francs’ worth! one would think she was a lady! no, you are mistaken! why, in the first place she was horrid, this one is not bad! she is really not bad! it cannot be she!”
“I tell you it is she. You will see.”
At this absolute affirmation, the woman raised her big red and blond face and looked at the ceiling with a hideous expression. At that moment she appeared to Marius still more terrible than her husband. She was a swine with the look of a tigress.
“What!” she resumed, “this horrible beautiful young lady who looked at my girls with an appearance of pity, can she be that beggar! Oh, I would like to stamp her heart out!”
She sprang off the bed, and remained a moment standing, her hair flying, her nostrils distended, her mouth half open, her fists clenched and drawn back. Then she fell back upon the pallet. The man still walked back and forth, paying no attention to his female.
After a few moments of silence, he approached her and stopped before her, with folded arms, as before.
“And do you want to know something?”
“What?” she asked.
He answered in a quick and low voice:
“My fortune is made.”
The woman stared at him with that look which means: Has the man who is talking to me gone crazy?
He continued:
“Thunder! it is a good long time now that I have been a parishioner of the die-of-hunger-if-you-have-any-fire-and-die-of-cold-if-you-have-any-bread parish! I have had misery enough! my burden and the burden of other people! It’s not time for jokes anymore, it’s not funny anymore, enough puns, good God! No more farces, Father Eternal! I want food for my hunger, I want drink for my thirst! to stuff! to sleep! to do nothing! I want to have my turn, I do! before I burst! I want to be a bit of a millionaire!”
He took a turn about the garret and added:
“Like other people.”
“What do you mean?” asked the woman.
He shook his head, winked and lifted his voice like a street doctor about to make a demonstration:
“What do I mean? listen!”
“Hist!” muttered the woman, “not so loud! if it means business nobody must hear.”
“Pshaw! who is there to hear? our neighbour? I saw him go out just now. Besides, does he hear, that big dummy? and then I tell you that I saw him go out.”
Nevertheless, by a sort of instinct, Jondrette lowered his voice, not enough, however, for his words to escape Marius. A favourable circumstance, and one which enabled Marius to lose nothing of this conversation, was that the fallen snow muffled the sound of the carriages on the boulevard.
Marius heard this:
“Listen up. He is caught, the Crœsus! or he might as well be. It is already done. Everything is arranged. I have seen the men. He will come this evening at six o‘clock. To bring his sixty francs, the rascal! did you see how I got that out, my sixty francs, my landlord, my 4th of February! it is not even a quarter! was that stupid! He will come then at six o’clock! our neighbour is gone to dinner then. Mother Bougon is washing dishes in the city. There is nobody in the house. Our neighbour never comes back before eleven o‘clock. The girls will stand watch. You shall help us. He will comply.”
“And if he should not be his own executor,” asked the wife.
Jondrette made a sinister gesture and said:
“We will execute him.”du
And he burst into a laugh.
It was the first time that Marius had seen him laugh. This laugh was cold and soft, and made him shudder.
Jondrette opened a closet near the chimney, took out an old cap and put it on his head after brushing it with his sleeve.
“Now,” said he, “I am going out. I have still some men to see. Some good ones. You will see how it is going to work. I shall be back