Les miserables (Abridged) - Victor Hugo [300]
About a week after these measures were taken, one night, a watchman, who was watching the dormitory in the lower part of the New Building, at the instant of putting his chestnut into the chestnut-box-this is the means employed to make sure that the watchmen do their duty with exactness; every hour a chestnut must fall into every box nailed on the doors of the dormitories—a watchman then saw through the peep-hole of the dormitory, Brujon sitting up in his bed and writing something by the light of the reflector. The warden entered, Brujon was put in solitary for a month, but they could not find what he had written. The police knew nothing more.
It is certain, however, that the next day “a postman” was thrown from the Charlemagne court into the Fosse aux Lions, over the five-story building which separates the two courts.
Prisoners call a ball of bread artistically kneaded, which is sent into Ireland, that is to say, over the roof of a prison from one court to the other, a postman. Etymology: over England; from one county to the other; into Ireland. This ball falls in the court. He who picks it up opens it, and finds a letter in it addressed to some prisoner in the court. If it be a convict who finds it, he hands the letter to its destination; if it be a warden, or one of those secretly bribed prisoners who are called sheep in the prisons and foxes in the galleys, the letter is carried to the office and delivered to the police.
This time the postman reached its address, although he for whom the message was destined was then in solitary. Its recipient was none other than Babet, one of the four heads of Patron-Minette.
The postman contained a paper rolled up, on which there were only these two lines:
“Babet, there is an affair on hand in the Rue Plumet. A grating in a garden.”
This was the thing that Brujon had written in the night.
In spite of spies, both male and female, Babet found means to send the letter from La Force to La Salpêtrière to “a friend” of his who was shut up there. This girl in her turn transmitted the letter to another whom she knew, named Magnon, who was closely watched by the police, but not yet arrested. This Magnon, whose name the reader has already seen, had some relations with the Thénardiers which will be related hereafter, and could, by going to see Eponine, serve as a bridge between La Salpêtrière and Les Madelonnettes.
It happened just at that very moment, the proofs in the prosecution of Thénardier failing in regard to his daughters, that Eponine and Azelma were released.
When Eponine came out, Magnon, who was watching for her at the door of Les Madelonnettes, handed her Brujon’s note to Babet, charging her to scout out the affair.
Eponine went to the Rue Plumet, reconnoitred the grating and the garden, looked at the house, spied, watched, and, a few days after, carried to Magnon, who lived in the Rue Clocheperce, a biscuit, which Magnon transmitted to Babet’s mistress at La Salpêtrière. A biscuit, in the dark symbolism of the prisons, signifies: nothing to do.
So that in less than a week after that, Babet and Brujon, meeting on the way from La Force, as one was going “to examination,” and the other was returning from it: “Well,” asked Brujon, “the Rue P.?” “Biscuit,” answered Babet.
This was the end of that foetus of crime, engendered by Brujon in La Force.
This abortion, however, led to results entirely foreign to Brujon’s programme. We shall see them.
Often, when thinking to knot one thread, we tie another.
2 (4)
AN APPARITION TO MARIUS
Distracted by Cosette’s disappearance, and unable to concentrate on the translation work