Les miserables (Abridged) - Victor Hugo [410]
He seized Marius’ hand, seeking for his pulse.
“He is wounded,” said Jean Valjean.
“He is dead,” said Javert.
Jean Valjean answered:
“No. Not yet.”
“You have brought him, then, from the barricade here?” observed Javert.
His preoccupation must have been deep, as he did not dwell longer upon this perplexing escape through the sewer, and did not even notice Jean Valjean’s silence after his question.
Jean Valjean, for his part, seemed to have but one idea. He resumed:
“He lives in the Marais, Rue des Filles du Calvaire, at his grandfather’s —I forget the name.”
Jean Valjean felt in Marius’ coat, took out the pocket-book, opened it at the page pencilled by Marius, and handed it to Javert.
There was still enough light floating in the air to enable one to read. Javert, moreover, had in his eye the feline phosphorescence of the birds of the night. He deciphered the few lines written by Marius, and muttered: “Gillenormand, Rue des Filles du Calvaire, No. 6.”
Then he cried: “Driver?”
The reader will remember the fiacre which was waiting, in case of need.
Javert kept Marius’ pocket-book.
A moment later, the carriage, descending by the slope of the watering-place, was on the quai. Marius was laid upon the back seat, and Javert sat down by the side of Jean Valjean on the front seat.
When the door was shut, the fiacre moved rapidly off, going up the quai in the direction of the Bastille.
They left the quai and entered the streets. The driver, a black silhouette upon his box, whipped up his bony horses. Icy silence in the coach. Marius, motionless, his body braced in the corner of the carriage, his head dropping down upon his breast, his arms hanging, his legs rigid, appeared to await nothing now but a coffin; Jean Valjean seemed made of shadow, and Javert of stone; and in that carriage full of night, the interior of which, whenever it passed before a lamp, appeared to turn lividly pale, as if from an intermittent flash, chance grouped together, and seemed dismally to confront the three tragic immobilities, the corpse, the spectre, and the statue.
10
RETURN OF THE PRODIGAL SON—OF HIS LIFE
AT EVERY JOLT over the pavement, a drop of blood fell from Marius’ hair.
It was after nightfall when the fiacre arrived at No. 6, in the Rue des Filles du Calvaire.
Javert first set foot on the ground, verified at a glance the number above the porte-cochère, and, lifting the heavy wrought-iron knocker, embellished in the old fashion, with a goat and a satyr defying each other, struck a violent blow. The panel of the door partly opened, and Javert pushed it. The porter showed himself, gaping and half-awake, a candle in his hand.
Everybody in the house was asleep. People go to bed early in the Marais, especially on days of riot. That good old neighbourhood, startled by the Revolution, takes refuge in slumber, as children, when they hear Bugaboo coming, hide their heads very quickly under their coverlets.
Meanwhile Jean Valjean and the driver lifted Marius out of the coach, Jean Valjean supporting him by the armpits, and the coachman by the knees.
While he was carrying Marius in this way, Jean Valjean slipped his hand under his clothes, which were much torn, felt his breast, and assured himself that the heart still beat. It beat even a little less feebly, as if the motion of the carriage had determined a certain renewal of life.
Javert called out to the porter in the tone which befits the government, in presence of the porter of an insurrectionist.
“Somebody whose name is Gillenormand?”
“It is here. What do you want with him?”
“We’ve brought his son home.”
“His son?” said the porter with amazement.
“He is dead.”
Jean Valjean, who came ragged and dirty, behind Javert, and whom the porter beheld with some horror, motioned to him with his head that he was not.
The porter did not appear to understand either Javert’s words, or Jean Valjean’s signs.
Javert continued:
“He has been to the barricade, and here he is.”
“To the barricade!” exclaimed the porter.
“He has got himself killed. Go and wake his father.