3.V.5.8. TWO MEN IMPOSSIBLE TO FIND
MARIUS' enchantment, great as it was, could not efface from
his mind other pre-occupations.
While the wedding was in preparation, and while awaiting
the date fixed upon, he caused difficult and scrupulous
retrospective
researches to be made.
He owed gratitude in various quarters; he owed it on his
father's account, he owed it on his own.
There was Thenardier; there was the unknown man who
had brought him, Marius, back to M. Gillenormand.
Marius endeavored to find these two men, not intending to
marry, to be happy, and to forget them, and fearing that, were
these debts of gratitude not discharged, they would leave a
shadow on his life, which promised so brightly for the future.
It was impossible for him to leave all these arrears of
suffering
behind him, and he wished, before entering joyously into
the future, to obtain a quittance from the past.
That Thenardier was a villain detracted nothing from the
fact that he had saved Colonel Pontmercy. Thenardier was a
ruffian in the eyes of all the world except Marius.
And Marius, ignorant of the real scene in the battle field
of
Waterloo, was not aware of the peculiar detail, that his father,
so far as Thenardier was concerned was in the strange position
of being indebted to the latter for his life, without being
indebted to him for any gratitude.
None of the various agents whom Marius employed succeeded
in discovering any trace of Thenardier. Obliteration
appeared to be complete in that quarter. Madame Thenardier
had died in prison pending the trial. Thenardier and his
daughter Azelma, the only two remaining of that lamentable
group, had plunged back into the gloom. The gulf of the
social unknown had silently closed above those beings. On
the surface there was not visible so much as that quiver, that
trembling, those obscure concentric circles which announce
that something has fallen in, and that the plummet may be
dropped.
Madame Thenardier being dead, Boulatruelle being
eliminated
from the case, Claquesous having disappeared, the principal
persons accused having escaped from prison, the trial
connected with the ambush in the Gorbeau house had come to
nothing.
That affair had remained rather obscure. The bench of
Assizes had been obliged to content themselves with two
subordinates. Panchaud, alias Printanier, alias Bigrenaille,
and Demi-Liard, alias Deux-Milliards, who had been inconsistently
condemned, after a hearing of both sides of the case,
to ten years in the galleys. Hard labor for life had been the
sentence pronounced against the escaped and contumacious
accomplices.
Thenardier, the head and leader, had been, through
contumacy,
likewise condemned to death.
This sentence was the only information remaining about
Thenardier, casting upon that buried name its sinister light
like a candle beside a bier.
Moreover, by thrusting Thenardier back into the very
remotest
depths, through a fear of being re-captured, this sentence
added to the density of the shadows which enveloped this
man.
As for the other person, as for the unknown man who had
saved Marius, the researches were at first to some extent
successful,
then came to an abrupt conclusion. They succeeded
in finding the carriage which had brought Marius to the
Rue des Filles-du-Calvaire on the evening of the 6th of
June.
The coachman declared that, on the 6th of June, in
obedience
to the commands of a police-agent, he had stood from
three o'clock in the afternoon until nightfall on the Quai des
Champs-Elysees, above the outlet of the Grand Sewer; that,
towards nine o'clock in the evening, the grating of the sewer,
which abuts on the bank of the river, had opened; that a man
had emerged therefrom, bearing on his shoulders another man,
who seemed to be dead; that the agent, who was on the watch
at that point, had arrested the living man and had seized the
dead man; that, at the order of the police-agent, he, the
coachman,
had taken "all those folks" into his carriage; that they
had first driven to the Rue des Filles-du-Calvaire; that they
had there deposited the dead man; that the dead man was
Monsieur Marius, and that he, the coachman, recognized him
perfectly, although he was alive "this time"; that afterwards,
they had entered the vehicle again, that he had whipped up
his horses; a few paces from the gate of the Archives, they
had called to him to halt; that there, in the street, they had
paid him and left him, and that the police-agent had led the
other man away; that he knew nothing more; that the night
had been very dark.
Marius, as we have said, recalled nothing. He only
remembered
that he had been seized from behind by an energetic
hand at the moment when he was falling backwards into the
barricade; then, everything vanished so far as he was concerned.
He had only regained consciousness at M. Gillenormand's.
He was lost in conjectures.
He could not doubt his own identity. Still, how had it
come to pass that, having fallen in the Rue de la Chanvrerie,
he had been picked up by the police-agent on the banks of the
Seine, near the Pont des Invalides?
Some one had carried him from the Quartier des Halles to
the Champs-Elysees. And how? Through the sewer. Unheard-of devotion!
Some one? Who?
This was the man for whom Marius was searching.
Of this man, who was his savior, nothing; not a trace; not
the faintest indication.
Marius, although forced to preserve great reserve, in that
direction, pushed his inquiries as far as the prefecture of
police. There, no more than elsewhere, did the information
obtained lead to any enlightenment.
The prefecture knew less about the matter than did the
hackney-coachman. They had no knowledge of any arrest
having been made on the 6th of June at the mouth of the
Grand Sewer.
No report of any agent had been received there upon
this matter, which was regarded at the prefecture as a
fable. The invention of this fable was attributed to the
coachman.
A coachman who wants a gratuity is capable of anything,
even of imagination. The fact was assured, nevertheless, and
Marius could not doubt it, unless he doubted his own identity,
as we have just said.
Everything about this singular enigma was inexplicable.
What had become of that man, that mysterious man, whom
the coachman had seen emerge from the grating of the Grand
Sewer bearing upon his back the unconscious Marius, and
whom the police-agent on the watch had arrested in the very
act of rescuing an insurgent? What had become of the agent
himself?
Why had this agent preserved silence? Had the man
succeeded
in making his escape? Had he bribed the agent?
Why did this man give no sign of life to Marius, who owed
everything to him? His disinterestedness was no less tremendous
than his devotion. Why had not that man appeared
again? Perhaps he was above compensation, but no one is
above gratitude. Was he dead? Who was the man? What
sort of a face had he? No one could tell him this.
The coachman answered: "The night was very dark."
Basque and Nicolette, all in a flutter, had looked only at their
young master all covered with blood.
The porter, whose candle had lighted the tragic arrival of
Marius, had been the only one to take note of the man in
question, and this is the description that he gave:
"That man was terrible."
Marius had the blood-stained clothing which he had
worn when he had been brought back to his grandfather preserved,
in the hope that it would prove of service in his researches.
On examining the coat, it was found that one skirt had
been
torn in a singular way. A piece was missing.
One evening, Marius was speaking in the presence of
Cosette and Jean Valjean of the whole of that singular adventure,
of the innumerable inquiries which he had made, and of
the fruitlessness of his efforts. The cold countenance of
"Monsieur Fauchelevent" angered him.
He exclaimed, with a vivacity which had something of
wrath in it:
"Yes, that man, whoever he may have been, was sublime.
Do you know what he did, sir? He intervened like an arch-angel.
He must have flung himself into the midst of the
battle, have stolen me away, have opened the sewer, have
dragged me into it and have carried me through it! He
must have traversed more than a league and a half in those
frightful subterranean galleries, bent over, weighed down, in
the dark, in the cess-pool, — more than a league and a half,
sir, with a corpse upon his back! And with what object?
With the sole object of saving the corpse. And that corpse I
was. He said to himself: 'There may still be a glimpse of
life there, perchance; I will risk my own existence for that
miserable spark!' And his existence he risked not once but
twenty times! And every step was a danger. The proof of
it is, that on emerging from the sewer, he was arrested. Do
you know, sir, that that man did all this? And he had no
recompense to expect. What was I? An insurgent. What
was I? One of the conquered. Oh! if Cosette's six hundred
thousand francs were mine . . ."
"They are yours," interrupted Jean Valjean.
"Well," resumed Marius, "I would give them all to find
that
man once more."
Jean Valjean remained silent.