Les miserables (Abridged) - Victor Hugo [273]
“No,” answered the girl; “but as his key is in the door, he has gone out.”
The father cried:
“Go in just the same.”
The door opened, and Marius saw the tall girl come in with a candle. She had the same appearance as in the morning, except that she was still more horrible in this light.
She walked straight towards the bed. Marius had a moment of inexpressible anxiety, but there was a mirror nailed on the wall near the bed; it was to that she was going. She stretched up on tiptoe and looked at herself in it. A sound of old iron rattling was heard in the next room.
She smoothed her hair with the palm of her hand, and smiled at the mirror, singing the while in her broken sepulchral voice:
Nos amours ont duré tout une semaine,
Mais que du bonheur les instants sont courts!
S‘adorer huit jours,’était bien la peine!
Le temps des amours devrait durer toujours!
Devrait durer toujours! devrait durer toujours!6
Meanwhile Marius was trembling. It seemed impossible to him that she should not hear his breathing.
She went to the window and looked out, speaking aloud in her half-crazy way.
“How ugly Paris is when he puts a white shirt on!” said she.
She returned to the mirror and renewed her grimaces, taking alternately front and the three-quarter views of herself.
“Well,” cried her father, “what are you doing now?”
“I am looking under the bed and the furniture,” answered she, continuing to arrange her hair; “there is nobody here.”
“Booby!” howled the father. “Here immediately, and let us lose no time.”
“I am coming! I am coming!” said she. “One has no time for anything in their shanty.”
She hummed:
Vous me quittez pour aller a la gloire,
Mon triste cœur suivra partout vos pas.
She cast a last glance at the mirror, and went out, shutting the door after her.
A moment afterwards, Marius heard the sound of the bare feet of the two young girls in the passage, and the voice of Jondrette crying to them.
“Pay attention, now! one towards the barrière, the other at the corner of the Rue du Petit Banquier. Don’t lose sight of the house door a minute, and if you see the least thing, here immediately! tumble along! You have a key to come in with.”
The elder daughter muttered:
“To stand sentry barefoot in the snow!”
“To-morrow you shall have boots of scarab colour silk!” said the father.
They went down the stairs, and, a few seconds afterwards, the sound of the lower door shutting announced that they had gone out.
There were now in the house only Marius and the Jondrettes, and probably also the mysterious beings of whom Marius had caught a glimpse in the twilight behind the door of the untenanted garret.
16 (17)
USE OF MARIUS’ FIVE-FRANC COIN
MARIUS judged that the time had come to resume his place at his observatory. In a twinkling, and with the agility of his age, he was at the hole in the partition.
He looked in.
The interior of the Jondrette apartment presented a singular appearance, and Marius found the explanation of the strange light which he had noticed. A candle was burning in a verdigrised candlestick, but it was not that which really lighted the room. The entire den was, as it were, illuminated by the reflection of a large sheet iron furnace in the fireplace, which was filled with lighted charcoal. The fire which the female Jondrette had made ready in the daytime. The charcoal was burning and the furnace was red hot, a blue flame danced over it and helped to show the form of the chisel bought by Jondrette in the Rue Pierre Lombard, which was growing ruddy among the coals. In a corner near the door, and arranged as if for anticipated use, were two heaps which appeared to be, one a heap of old iron, the other a heap of ropes. All this would have made one, who had known nothing of what was going forward, waver between a very sinister idea and a very simple idea. The room thus lighted up seemed rather a smithy than a mouth of hell; but Jondrette, in that glare, had rather the appearance of a demon than of a blacksmith.
The heat of the glowing coals was such that the candle