Les miserables (Abridged) - Victor Hugo [333]
“Hold on!” said he, “it is my father!—Well, that don’t hinder!”
And taking the rope in his teeth, he resolutely commenced the ascent.
He reached the top of the ruin, bestrode the old wall like a horse, and tied the rope firmly to the upper cross-bar of the window.
A moment afterwards Thénardier was in the street.
As soon as he had touched the pavement, as soon as he felt himself out of danger, he was no longer either fatigued, benumbed, or trembling; the terrible things through which he had passed vanished like a whiff of smoke, all that strange and ferocious intellect awoke, and found itself erect and free, ready to march forward. The man’s first words were these:
“Now, who are we going to eat?”
It is needless to explain the meaning of this frightfully transparent word, which signifies all at once to kill, to assassinate, and to plunder. Eat, real meaning: devour.
“Let us hide first,” said Brujon, “finish in three words and we will separate immediately. There was an affair which had a good look in the Rue Plumet, a deserted street, an isolated house, an old rusty grating upon a garden, some lone women.”
“Well, why not?” inquired Thénardier.
“Your féefj Eponine, has been to see the thing,” answered Babet.
“And she brought a biscuit to Magnon,” added Gueulemer, “nothing to maquiller there.”fk
“The fée isn’t loffe,”fl said Thénardier. “Still we must see.”
“Yes, yes,” said Brujon, “we must see.”
Meantime none of these men appeared longer to see Gavroche who, during this colloquy, had seated himself upon one of the stone supports of the fence; he waited a few minutes, perhaps for his father to turn towards him, then he put on his shoes, and said:
“It is over? you have no more use for me? men! you are out of your trouble. I am going. I must go and get my mômes up.”
And he went away.
The five men went out of the inclosure one after another.
When Gavroche had disappeared at the turn of the Rue des Ballets, Babet took Thénardier aside.
“Did you notice that mion?” he asked him.
“What mion?”
“The mion who climbed up the wall and brought you the rope.”
“Not much.”
“Well, I don’t know, but it seems to me that it is your son.”
“Pshaw!” said Thénardier, “do you think so?”
[Book Seven “Argot (On Slang),” does not appear in this abridged edition.]
BOOK EIGHT
ENCHANTMENT AND DESPAIR
1
SUNSHINE
THE READER HAS UNDERSTOOD that Eponine, having recognised through the grating the inhabitant of that Rue Plumet, to which Magnon had sent her, had begun by diverting the bandits from the Rue Plumet, had then conducted Marius thither, and that after several days of ecstasy before that grating, Marius, drawn by that force which pushes the iron towards the magnet and the lover towards the stones of which the house of her whom he loves is built, had finally entered Cosette’s garden as Romeo did the garden of Juliet. It had even been easier for him than for Romeo; Romeo was obliged to scale a wall, Marius had only to push aside a little one of the bars of the decrepit grating, which was loosened in its rusty socket, like the teeth of old people. Marius was slender, and easily passed through.
As there was never anybody in the street, and as, moreover, Marius entered the garden only at night, he ran no risk of being seen.
From that blessed and holy hour when a kiss affianced these two souls, Marius came every evening. If, at this period of her life, Cosette had fallen into the love of a man who was unscrupulous and a libertine, she would have been ruined; for there are generous natures which give themselves, and Cosette was one. One of the magnanimities of woman is to yield. Love, at that height at which it is absolute, is associated with an inexpressibly celestial blindness of modesty. But what risks do you run, 0 noble souls! Often, you give the heart, we take the body. Your heart remains to you, and you look upon it in the darkness, and shudder. Love has no middle term; either it destroys, or it saves. All human destiny is this dilemma. This