2.M.8.10. TARIFF OF LICENSED CABS: TWO FRANCS AN HOUR
MARIUS had lost nothing of this entire scene, and yet, in
reality, had seen nothing. His eyes had remained fixed on the
young girl, his heart had, so to speak, seized her and wholly
enveloped her from the moment of her very first step in that
garret. During her entire stay there, he had lived that life of
ecstasy which suspends material perceptions and precipitates
the whole soul on a single point. He contemplated, not that
girl, but that light which wore a satin pelisse and a velvet
bonnet.
The star Sirius might have entered the room, and he
would not have been any more dazzled.
While the young girl was engaged in opening the package,
unfolding the clothing and the blankets, questioning the sick
mother kindly, and the little injured girl tenderly, he watched
her every movement, he sought to catch her words. He knew
her eyes, her brow, her beauty, her form, her walk, he did not
know the sound of her voice. He had once fancied that he
had caught a few words at the Luxembourg, but he was not
absolutely sure of the fact. He would have given ten years of
his life to hear it, in order that he might bear away in his soul
a little of that music. But everything was drowned in the
lamentable exclamations and trumpet bursts of Jondrette.
This added a touch of genuine wrath to Marius' ecstasy. He
devoured her with his eyes. He could not believe that it really
was that divine creature whom he saw in the midst of those
vile creatures in that monstrous lair. It seemed to him that he
beheld a humming-bird in the midst of toads.
When she took her departure, he had but one thought, to
follow
her, to cling to her trace, not to quit her until he learned
where she lived, not to lose her again, at least, after having so
miraculously re-discovered her. He leaped down from the
commode and seized his hat. As he laid his hand on the lock
of the door, and was on the point of opening it, a sudden
reflection caused him to pause. The corridor was long, the
staircase steep, Jondrette was talkative, M. Leblanc had, no
doubt, not yet regained his carriage; if, on turning round in
the corridor, or on the staircase, he were to catch sight of him,
Marius, in that house, he would, evidently, take the alarm, and
find means to escape from him again, and this time it would be
final. What was he to do? Should he wait a little? But while
he was waiting, the carriage might drive off. Marius was
perplexed.
At last he accepted the risk and quitted his room.
There was no one in the corridor. He hastened to the
stairs. There was no one on the staircase. He descended in
all haste, and reached the boulevard in time to see a fiacre
turning the corner of the Rue du Petit-Banquier, on its way
back to Paris.
Marius rushed headlong in that direction. On arriving at
the angle of the boulevard, he caught sight of the fiacre again,
rapidly descending the Rue Mouffetard; the carriage was
already a long way off, and there was no means of overtaking
it; what! run after it? Impossible; and besides, the people in
the carriage would assuredly notice an individual running at
full speed in pursuit of a fiacre, and the father would recognize
him. At that moment, wonderful and unprecedented good
luck, Marius perceived an empty cab passing along the boulevard.
There was but one thing to be done, to jump into this
cab and follow the fiacre. That was sure, efficacious, and free
from danger.
Marius made the driver a sign to halt, and called to him: —
"By the hour?"
Marius wore no cravat, he had on his working-coat, which
was destitute of buttons, his shirt was torn along one of the
plaits on the bosom.
The driver halted, winked, and held out his left hand to
Marius, rubbing his forefinger gently with his thumb.
"What is it?" said Marius.
"Pay in advance," said the coachman.
Marius recollected that he had but sixteen sous about him.
"How much?" he demanded.
"Forty sous."
"I will pay on my return."
The driver's only reply was to whistle the air of La
Palisse
and to whip up his horse.
Marius stared at the retreating cabriolet with a
bewildered
air. For the lack of four and twenty sous, he was losing his
joy, his happiness, his love! He had seen, and he was becoming
blind again. He reflected bitterly, and it must be confessed,
with profound regret, on the five francs which he had
bestowed, that very morning, on that miserable girl. If he had
had those five francs, he would have been saved, he would have
been born again, he would have emerged from the limbo and
darkness, he would have made his escape from isolation and
spleen, from his widowed state; he might have re-knotted the
black thread of his destiny to that beautiful golden thread,
which had just floated before his eyes and had broken at the
same instant, once more! He returned to his hovel in despair.
He might have told himself that M. Leblanc had promised
to return in the evening, and that all he had to do was to set
about the matter more skilfully, so that he might follow him
on that occasion; but, in his contemplation, it is doubtful
whether he had heard this.
As he was on the point of mounting the staircase, he
perceived,
on the other side of the boulevard, near the deserted
wall skirting the Rue De la Barriere-des-Gobelins, Jondrette,
wrapped in the "philanthropist's" great-coat, engaged in
conversation
with one of those men of disquieting aspect who have
been dubbed by common consent, prowlers of the barriers;
people of equivocal face, of suspicious monologues, who present
the air of having evil minds, and who generally sleep
in the daytime, which suggests the supposition that they work
by night.
These two men, standing there motionless and in
conversation,
in the snow which was falling in whirlwinds, formed a
group that a policeman would surely have observed, but which
Marius hardly noticed.
Still, in spite of his mournful preoccupation, he could
not
refrain from saying to himself that this prowler of the barriers
with whom Jondrette was talking resembled a certain Panchaud,
alias Printanier, alias Bigrenaille, whom Courfeyrac
had once pointed out to him as a very dangerous nocturnal
roamer. This man's name the reader has learned in the preceding
book. This Panchaud, alias Printanier, alias Bigrenaille,
figured later on in many criminal trials, and became
a notorious rascal. He was at that time only a famous rascal.
To-day he exists in the state of tradition among ruffians and
assassins. He was at the head of a school towards the end of
the last reign. And in the evening, at nightfall, at the hour
when groups form and talk in whispers, he was discussed at
La Force in the Fosse-aux-Lions. One might even, in that
prison, precisely at the spot where the sewer which served the
unprecedented escape, in broad daylight, of thirty prisoners,
in 1843, passes under the culvert, read his name, PANCHAUD,
audaciously carved by his own hand on the wall
of the sewer, during one of his attempts at flight. In 1832,
the police already had their eye on him, but he had not as
yet made a serious beginning.