Les miserables (Abridged) - Victor Hugo [269]
There was but one thing to be done.
He put on his presentable coat, tied a cravat about his neck, took his hat, and went out, without making any more noise than if he had been walking barefooted upon moss.
Besides the Jondrette woman was still fumbling with her old scrap iron.
Once out of the house, he went to the Rue du Petit Banquier.
He was about midway of that street near a very low wall which he could have stepped over in some places and which bordered a broad field, he was walking slowly, absorbed in his thoughts as he was, and the snow deafened his steps; all at once he heard voices talking very near him. He turned his head, the street was empty, there was nobody in it, it was broad daylight, and yet he heard voices distinctly.
It occurred to him to look over this wall.
There were in fact two men there with their backs to the wall, seated in the snow, and talking in a low tone.
These two forms were unknown to him, one was a bearded man in a smock, and the other a long-haired man in tatters. The bearded man had on a Greek cap, the other was bare-headed, and there was snow in his hair.
By bending his head over above them, Marius could hear.
The long-haired one jogged the other with his elbow, and said:
“With Patron-Minette, it can’t fail.”
“Do you think so?” said the bearded one; and the long-haired one replied:
“It will be a fafiot of five hundred balles for each of us, and the worst that can happen: five years, six years, ten years at most!”dw
The other answered hesitatingly, shivering under his Greek cap:
“Yes, that’s real money. We can’t pass it up.”
“I tell you that the deal can’t fail,” replied the long-haired one. “We’ll fix Old What‘s-his-name’s waggon for him.”
Then they began to talk about a melodrama which they had seen the evening before at La Gaîté.
Marius went on his way.
It seemed to him that the obscure words of these men, so strangely hidden behind that wall, and crouching down in the snow, were not perhaps without some connection with Jondrette’s terrible projects. That must be the deal.
He went towards the Faubourg Saint Marceau, and asked at the first shop in his way where he could find a chief of police.
Number 14, Rue de Pontoise, was pointed out to him.
Marius went thither.
Passing a baker’s shop, he bought a two-sou loaf and ate it, foreseeing that he would have no dinner.
On his way he rendered to Providence its due. He thought that if he had not given his five francs to the Jondrette girl in the morning, he would have followed M. Leblanc’s fiacre, and consequently known nothing of this, so that there would have been no obstacle to the ambush of the Jondrettes, and M. Leblanc would have been lost, and doubtless his daughter with him.
13 (14)
IN WHICH A POLICE OFFICER GIVES A LAWYER TWO COUPS DE POIGN
ON REACHING Number 14, Rue de Pontoise, he went upstairs and asked for the chief of police.
“The chief of police is not in,” said one of the office boys; “but there is an inspector who answers for him. Would you like to speak to him? is it urgent?”
“Yes,” said Marius.
The office boy introduced him into the chiefs office. A man of tall stature was standing there, behind a railing, in front of a stove, and holding up with both hands the flaps of a huge overcoat with three layered flaps. He had a square face, a thin and firm mouth, very fierce, bushy, greyish whiskers, and an eye that would turn your pockets inside out. You might have said of this eye, not that it penetrated, but that it ransacked.
This man’s appearance was not much less ferocious or formidable than Jondrette’s; it is sometimes no less startling to meet the dog than the wolf.
“What do you wish?” said he to Marius, without adding monsieur.
“The chief of police?”
“He is absent. I answer for him.