Les miserables (Abridged) - Victor Hugo [357]
“You see that big fellow there?”
“Well?”
“He is a spy.”
“You are sure?”
“It isn’t a fortnight since he pulled me by the ear off the cornice of the Pont Royal where I was taking the air.”
Enjolras hastily left the gamin, and murmured a few words very low to a working-man from the wine docks who was there. The working-man went out of the room and returned almost immediately, accompanied by three others. The four men, four broad-shouldered porters, placed themselves, without doing anything which could attract his attention, behind the table on which the man of the Rue des Billettes was leaning. They were evidently ready to throw themselves upon him.
Then Enjolras approached the man and asked him:
“Who are you?”
At this abrupt question, the man gave a start. He looked straight to the bottom of Enjolras’ frank eye and appeared to catch his thought. He smiled with a smile which, of all things in the world, was the most disdainful, the most energetic, and the most resolute, and answered with a haughty gravity:
“I see how it is—Well, yes!”
“You are a spy?”
“I am an officer of the government.”
“Your name is?”
“Javert.”
Enjolras made a sign to the four men. In a twinkling, before Javert had had time to turn around, he was collared, thrown down, bound, searched.
They found upon him a little round card framed between two glasses, and bearing on one side the arms of France, engraved with this legend: Surveillance et vigilance, and on the other side this endorsement: JAVERT, inspector of police, aged fifty-two, and the signature of the prefect of police of the time, M. Gisquet.
He had besides his watch and his purse, which contained a few gold coins. They left him his purse and his watch. Under the watch, at the bottom of his fob, they felt and seized a paper in an envelope, which Enjolras opened, and on which he read these six lines, written by the prefect’s own hand.
“As soon as his political mission is fulfilled, Inspector Javert will ascertain, by a special examination, whether it be true that malefactors have hideouts on the slope of the right bank of the Seine, near the bridge of Jena.”
The search finished, they raised Javert, tied his arms behind his back, fastened him in the middle of the basement-room to that celebrated post which had formerly given its name to the tavern.
Gavroche, who had witnessed the whole scene and approved the whole by silent nods of his head, approached Javert and said to him:
“The mouse has caught the cat.”
All this was executed so rapidly that it was finished as soon as it was perceived about the tavern. Javert had not uttered a cry. Seeing Javert tied to the post, Courfeyrac, Bossuet, Joly, Combeferre, and the men scattered about the two barricades, ran in.
Javert, backed up against the post, and so surrounded with ropes that he could make no movement, held up his head with the intrepid serenity of the man who has never lied.
“It is a spy,” said Enjolras.
And turning towards Javert:
“You will be shot ten minutes before the barricade is taken.”
Javert replied in his most imperious tone:
“Why not immediately?”
“We are economising powder.”
“Then do it with a knife.”
“Spy,” said the handsome Enjolras, “we are judges, not assassins.”
Then he called Gavroche.
“You! go about your business! Do what I told you.”
“I am going,” cried Gavroche.
And stopping just as he was starting:
“By the way, you will give me his musket!” And he added: “I leave you the musician, but I want the clarionet.”
The gamin made a military salute, and sprang gaily through the opening in the large barricade.
BOOK THIRTEEN
MARIUS ENTERS THE SHADOW
1
FROM THE RUE PLUMET TO THE QUARTIER SAINT-DENIS
THAT VOICE WHICH through the twilight had called Marius to the barricade of the Rue de la Chanvrerie, sounded to him like the voice of destiny. He wished to die, the opportunity presented itself; he was knocking at the door of the tomb, a hand in the shadow held out the key. These dreary clefts in the darkness before despair are tempting. Marius pushed aside