Les miserables (Abridged) - Victor Hugo [407]
“Ah now, comrade, how did you manage to get out of the quagmire yonder? I haven’t dared to risk myself there. Peugh! you don’t smell good.”
After a pause, he added:
“I ask you questions, but you are right in not answering them. That is an apprenticeship for the examining judge’s cursed quarter of an hour. And then by not speaking at all, you run no risk of speaking too loud. It is all the same, because I don’t see your face, and because I don’t know your name, you would do wrong to suppose that I don’t know who you are and what you want. Understood. You have smashed this gentleman a little; now you want to stow him somewhere. You need the river, the great hide-folly. I am going to get you out of the scrape. To help a good fellow in trouble, that’s what I like.”gv
While approving Jean Valjean for keeping silence, he was evidently seeking to make him speak. He pushed his shoulders, so as to endeavour to see his profile, and exclaimed, without however rising above a moderate tone:
“Speaking of the quagmire, you are a proud animal. Why didn’t you throw the man in there?”
Jean Valjean preserved silence.
Thénardier resumed, raising the rag which served him as a cravat up to his Adam’s apple, a gesture which completes the air of sagacity of a serious man:
“Indeed, perhaps you have acted prudently. The workmen when they come to-morrow to stop the hole, would certainly have found the dummy forgotten there, and they would have been able, thread by thread, straw by straw, to find the trace, and to get to you. Something has passed through the sewer? Who? Where did he come out? Did anybody see him come out? The police has plenty of brains. The sewer is treacherous and informs against you. Such a discovery is a rarity, it attracts attention, few people use the sewer in their business while the river is at everybody’s service. The river is the true grave. At the month’s end, they fish you up the man at the nets of Saint Cloud. Well, what does that amount to? It is a carcass, indeed! Who killed this man? Paris. And justice don’t even inquire into it. You have done right.”
The more loquacious Thénardier was, the more dumb was Jean Valjean. Thénardier pushed his shoulder anew.
“Now, let us finish the business. Let us divide. You have seen my key, show me your money.”
Thénardier was haggard, savage, shady, a little threatening, nevertheless friendly.
There was one strange circumstance; Thénardier’s manner was not natural; he did not appear entirely at his ease; while he did not affect an air of mystery, he talked low; from time to time he laid his finger on his mouth, and muttered: “Hush!” It was difficult to guess why. There was nobody there but them. Jean Valjean thought that perhaps some other bandits were hidden in some recess not far off, and that Thénardier did not care to share with them.
Thénardier resumed:
“Let us finish. How much did the stiff have in his deeps?”
Jean Valjean felt in his pockets.
It was, as will be remembered, his custom always to have money about him. The gloomy life of expedients to which he was condemned, made this a law to him. This time, however, he was caught unprepared. On putting on his National Guard’s uniform, the evening before, he had forgotten, gloomily absorbed as he was, to take his pocket-book with him. He had only some coins in his waistcoat pocket. He turned out his pocket, all soaked with filth, and displayed upon the curb of the sewer a louis d‘or, two five-franc coins, and five or six big sous.
Thénardier thrust out his under lip with a significant twist of the neck.
“You didn’t kill him very dear,” said he.
He began to handle, in all familiarity, the pockets of Jean Valjean and Marius. Jean Valjean, principally concerned in keeping his back to the light, did not interfere with him. While he was feeling of Marius’ coat, Thénardier, with the dexterity of a juggler, found means, without attracting Jean Valjean’s attention, to tear off a strip, which he hid under his smock, probably thinking that this scrap of cloth might assist him afterwards to