Les miserables (Abridged) - Victor Hugo [411]
The porter did not stir.
“Get to it!” repeated Javert.
The porter merely woke Basque. Basque woke Nicolette; Nicolette woke Aunt Gillenormand. As to the grandfather, they let him sleep, thinking that he would know it soon enough at all events.
They carried Marius up to the second story, without anybody, moreover, perceiving it in the other portions of the house, and they laid him on an old couch in M. Gillenormand’s ante-chamber; and, while Basque went for a doctor and Nicolette was opening the linen closets, Jean Valjean felt Javert touch him on the shoulder. He understood, and went down stairs, having behind him Javert’s following steps.
The porter saw them depart as he had seen them arrive, with drowsy dismay.
They got into the fiacre again, and the driver mounted upon his box.
“Inspector Javert,” said Jean Valjean, “grant me one thing more.”
“What?” asked Javert roughly.
“Let me go home a moment. Then you shall do with me what you will.”
Javert remained silent for a few seconds, his chin drawn back into the collar of his overcoat, then he let down the window in front.
“Driver,” said he, “Rue de l‘Homme Armé, No. 7.”
11
COMMOTION IN THE ABSOLUTE
THEY DID NOT open their mouths again for the whole distance.
What did Jean Valjean desire? To finish what he had begun; to inform Cosette, to tell her where Marius was, to give her perhaps some other useful information, to make, if he could, certain final dispositions. As to himself, as to what concerned him personally, it was all over; he had been seized by Javert and did not resist; another than he, in such a condition, would perhaps have thought vaguely of that rope which Thénardier had given him and of the bars of the first cell which he should enter; but, since the bishop, there had been in Jean Valjean, in view of any violent attempt, were it even upon his own life, let us repeat, a deep religious hesitation.
Suicide, that mysterious assault upon the unknown, which may contain, in a certain measure, the death of the soul, was impossible to Jean Valjean.
At the entrance of the Rue de l‘Homme Armé, the fiacre stopped, this street being too narrow for carriages to enter. Javert and Jean Valjean got out.
The driver humbly represented to monsieur the inspector that the Utrecht velvet of his carriage was all stained with the blood of the assassinated man and with the mud of the assassin. That was what he had understood. He added that an indemnity was due him. At the same time, taking his little book from his pocket, he begged monsieur the inspector to have the goodness to write him “a little scrap of certificate as to what.”
Javert pushed back the little book which the driver handed him, and said:
“How much must you have, including your stop and your trip?”
“It is seven hours and a quarter,” answered the driver, “and my velvet was brand new. Eighty francs, monsieur the inspector.”
Javert took four napoleons from his pocket and dismissed the fiacre.
Jean Valjean thought that Javert’s intention was to take him on foot to the post of the Blancs-Manteaux or to the post of the Archives which are quite near by.
They entered the street. It was, as usual, empty. Javert followed Jean Valjean. They reached No. 7. Jean Valjean rapped. The door opened.
“Very well,” said Javert. “Go up.”
He added with a strange expression and as if he were making an effort in speaking in such a way:
“I will wait here for you.”
Jean Valjean looked at Javert. This manner of proceeding was little in accordance with Javert’s habits. Still, that Javert should now have a sort of haughty confidence in him, the confidence of the cat which grants the mouse the liberty of the length of her claw, resolved as Jean Valjean was to deliver himself up and make an end of it, could not surprise him very much. He opened the door, went into the house, cried to the porter who was in bed and who had drawn the bolt without getting up: “It is I!” and mounted the stairs.
On reaching the second story, he paused. All painful paths have their halting-places. The window on the landing, which was a sliding