Les miserables (Abridged) - Victor Hugo [278]
While speaking Jondrette did not look at M. Leblanc, who was watching him. M. Leblanc’s eye was fixed upon Jondrette, and Jondrette’s eye upon the door, Marius’ breathless attention went from one to the other. M. Leblanc appeared to ask himself, “Is this an idiot?” Jondrette repeated two or three times with all sorts of varied inflections in the drawling and begging style: “I can only throw myself into the river! I went down three steps for that the other day by the side of the bridge of Austerlitz!”
Suddenly his dull eye lighted up with a hideous glare, this little man straightened up and became horrifying, he took a step towards M. Leblanc and cried to him in a voice of thunder:
“But all this is not the question! do you know me?”
19 (20)
THE AMBUSH
THE DOOR of the garret had been suddenly flung open, disclosing three men in blue smocks with black paper masks. The first was spare and had a long iron-bound cudgel; the second, who was a sort of colossus, held by the middle of the handle, with the blade down, a butcher’s pole-axe. The third, a broad-shouldered man, not so thin as the first, nor so heavy as the second, held in his clenched fist an enormous key stolen from some prison door.
It appeared that it was the arrival of these men for which Jondrette was waiting. A rapid dialogue commenced between him and the man with the cudgel, the spare man.
“Is everything ready?” said Jondrette.
“Yes,” answered the spare man.
“Where is Montparnasse then?”
“The pretty boy stopped to chat with your daughter.”
“Which one?”
“The elder.”
“Is there a fiacre below?”
“Yes.”
“The waggon is ready?”
“Ready.”
“With two good horses?”
“Excellent.”
“It is waiting where I said it should wait?”
“Yes.”
“Good,” said Jondrette.
M. Leblanc was very pale. He looked over everything in the room about him like a man who understands into what he has fallen, and his head, directed in turn towards all the heads which surrounded him, moved on his neck with an attentive and astonished slowness, but there was nothing in his manner which resembled fear. He had made an extemporised intrenchment of the table; and this man who, the moment before, had the appearance only of a good old man, had suddenly become a sort of athlete, and placed his powerful fist upon the back of his chair with a surprising and formidable gesture.
This old man, so firm and so brave before so great a peril, seemed to be one of those natures who are courageous as they are good, simply and naturally. The father of a woman that we love is never a stranger to us. Marius felt proud of this unknown man.
Three of the men of whom Jondrette had said: they are chimney doctors, had taken from the heap of old iron, one a large pair of shears, another a steelyard tongs, the third a hammer, and placed themselves before the door without saying a word. The old man was still on the bed, and had merely opened his eyes. The woman Jondrette was sitting beside him.
Marius thought that in a few seconds more the time would come to interfere, and he raised his right hand towards the ceiling, in the direction of the hall, ready to let off his pistol-shot.
Jondrette, after his colloquy with the man who had the cudgel, turned again towards M. Leblanc and repeated his question, accompanying it with that low, smothered, and terrible laugh of his:
“You do not recognise me, then?”
M. Leblanc looked him in the face, and answered:
“No.”
Then Jondrette came up to the table. He leaned forward over the candle, folding his arms, and pushing his angular and ferocious jaws up towards the calm face of M. Leblanc, as nearly as he could without forcing him to draw back, and in that posture, like a wild beast just about to bite, he cried:
“My name is not Fabantou, my name is not Jondrette, my name is Thénardier! I am the innkeeper of Montfermeil! do you understand me? Thénardier! now do you know me?”
An imperceptible flush passed over M. Leblanc’s forehead, and he answered without a tremor or elevation of voice, and with his usual placid-ness :
“No more than before.”7
Marius did