Les Misérables by Victor Hugo
CHAPTER VI—WHICH POSSIBLY PROVES BOULATRUELLE’S INTELLIGENCE
1912 words | Chapter 173
On the afternoon of that same Christmas Day, 1823, a man had walked for
rather a long time in the most deserted part of the Boulevard de
l’Hôpital in Paris. This man had the air of a person who is seeking
lodgings, and he seemed to halt, by preference, at the most modest
houses on that dilapidated border of the faubourg Saint-Marceau.
We shall see further on that this man had, in fact, hired a chamber in
that isolated quarter.
This man, in his attire, as in all his person, realized the type of
what may be called the well-bred mendicant,—extreme wretchedness
combined with extreme cleanliness. This is a very rare mixture which
inspires intelligent hearts with that double respect which one feels
for the man who is very poor, and for the man who is very worthy. He
wore a very old and very well brushed round hat; a coarse coat, worn
perfectly threadbare, of an ochre yellow, a color that was not in the
least eccentric at that epoch; a large waistcoat with pockets of a
venerable cut; black breeches, worn gray at the knee, stockings of
black worsted; and thick shoes with copper buckles. He would have been
pronounced a preceptor in some good family, returned from the
emigration. He would have been taken for more than sixty years of age,
from his perfectly white hair, his wrinkled brow, his livid lips, and
his countenance, where everything breathed depression and weariness of
life. Judging from his firm tread, from the singular vigor which
stamped all his movements, he would have hardly been thought fifty. The
wrinkles on his brow were well placed, and would have disposed in his
favor any one who observed him attentively. His lip contracted with a
strange fold which seemed severe, and which was humble. There was in
the depth of his glance an indescribable melancholy serenity. In his
left hand he carried a little bundle tied up in a handkerchief; in his
right he leaned on a sort of a cudgel, cut from some hedge. This stick
had been carefully trimmed, and had an air that was not too
threatening; the most had been made of its knots, and it had received a
coral-like head, made from red wax: it was a cudgel, and it seemed to
be a cane.
There are but few passers-by on that boulevard, particularly in the
winter. The man seemed to avoid them rather than to seek them, but this
without any affectation.
At that epoch, King Louis XVIII. went nearly every day to
Choisy-le-Roi: it was one of his favorite excursions. Towards two
o’clock, almost invariably, the royal carriage and cavalcade was seen
to pass at full speed along the Boulevard de l’Hôpital.
This served in lieu of a watch or clock to the poor women of the
quarter who said, “It is two o’clock; there he is returning to the
Tuileries.”
And some rushed forward, and others drew up in line, for a passing king
always creates a tumult; besides, the appearance and disappearance of
Louis XVIII. produced a certain effect in the streets of Paris. It was
rapid but majestic. This impotent king had a taste for a fast gallop;
as he was not able to walk, he wished to run: that cripple would gladly
have had himself drawn by the lightning. He passed, pacific and severe,
in the midst of naked swords. His massive couch, all covered with
gilding, with great branches of lilies painted on the panels, thundered
noisily along. There was hardly time to cast a glance upon it. In the
rear angle on the right there was visible on tufted cushions of white
satin a large, firm, and ruddy face, a brow freshly powdered _à
l’oiseau royal_, a proud, hard, crafty eye, the smile of an educated
man, two great epaulets with bullion fringe floating over a bourgeois
coat, the Golden Fleece, the cross of Saint Louis, the cross of the
Legion of Honor, the silver plaque of the Saint-Esprit, a huge belly,
and a wide blue ribbon: it was the king. Outside of Paris, he held his
hat decked with white ostrich plumes on his knees enwrapped in high
English gaiters; when he re-entered the city, he put on his hat and
saluted rarely; he stared coldly at the people, and they returned it in
kind. When he appeared for the first time in the Saint-Marceau quarter,
the whole success which he produced is contained in this remark of an
inhabitant of the faubourg to his comrade, “That big fellow yonder is
the government.”
This infallible passage of the king at the same hour was, therefore,
the daily event of the Boulevard de l’Hôpital.
The promenader in the yellow coat evidently did not belong in the
quarter, and probably did not belong in Paris, for he was ignorant as
to this detail. When, at two o’clock, the royal carriage, surrounded by
a squadron of the body-guard all covered with silver lace, debouched on
the boulevard, after having made the turn of the Salpêtrière, he
appeared surprised and almost alarmed. There was no one but himself in
this cross-lane. He drew up hastily behind the corner of the wall of an
enclosure, though this did not prevent M. le Duc de Havré from spying
him out.
M. le Duc de Havré, as captain of the guard on duty that day, was
seated in the carriage, opposite the king. He said to his Majesty,
“Yonder is an evil-looking man.” Members of the police, who were
clearing the king’s route, took equal note of him: one of them received
an order to follow him. But the man plunged into the deserted little
streets of the faubourg, and as twilight was beginning to fall, the
agent lost trace of him, as is stated in a report addressed that same
evening to M. le Comte d’Anglès, Minister of State, Prefect of Police.
When the man in the yellow coat had thrown the agent off his track, he
redoubled his pace, not without turning round many a time to assure
himself that he was not being followed. At a quarter-past four, that is
to say, when night was fully come, he passed in front of the theatre of
the Porte Saint-Martin, where _The Two Convicts_ was being played that
day. This poster, illuminated by the theatre lanterns, struck him; for,
although he was walking rapidly, he halted to read it. An instant later
he was in the blind alley of La Planchette, and he entered the _Plat
d’Etain_ [the Pewter Platter], where the office of the coach for Lagny
was then situated. This coach set out at half-past four. The horses
were harnessed, and the travellers, summoned by the coachman, were
hastily climbing the lofty iron ladder of the vehicle.
The man inquired:—
“Have you a place?”
“Only one—beside me on the box,” said the coachman.
“I will take it.”
“Climb up.”
Nevertheless, before setting out, the coachman cast a glance at the
traveller’s shabby dress, at the diminutive size of his bundle, and
made him pay his fare.
“Are you going as far as Lagny?” demanded the coachman.
“Yes,” said the man.
The traveller paid to Lagny.
They started. When they had passed the barrier, the coachman tried to
enter into conversation, but the traveller only replied in
monosyllables. The coachman took to whistling and swearing at his
horses.
The coachman wrapped himself up in his cloak. It was cold. The man did
not appear to be thinking of that. Thus they passed Gournay and
Neuilly-sur-Marne.
Towards six o’clock in the evening they reached Chelles. The coachman
drew up in front of the carters’ inn installed in the ancient buildings
of the Royal Abbey, to give his horses a breathing spell.
“I get down here,” said the man.
He took his bundle and his cudgel and jumped down from the vehicle.
An instant later he had disappeared.
He did not enter the inn.
When the coach set out for Lagny a few minutes later, it did not
encounter him in the principal street of Chelles.
The coachman turned to the inside travellers.
“There,” said he, “is a man who does not belong here, for I do not know
him. He had not the air of owning a sou, but he does not consider
money; he pays to Lagny, and he goes only as far as Chelles. It is
night; all the houses are shut; he does not enter the inn, and he is
not to be found. So he has dived through the earth.”
The man had not plunged into the earth, but he had gone with great
strides through the dark, down the principal street of Chelles, then he
had turned to the right before reaching the church, into the crossroad
leading to Montfermeil, like a person who was acquainted with the
country and had been there before.
He followed this road rapidly. At the spot where it is intersected by
the ancient tree-bordered road which runs from Gagny to Lagny, he heard
people coming. He concealed himself precipitately in a ditch, and there
waited until the passers-by were at a distance. The precaution was
nearly superfluous, however; for, as we have already said, it was a
very dark December night. Not more than two or three stars were visible
in the sky.
It is at this point that the ascent of the hill begins. The man did not
return to the road to Montfermeil; he struck across the fields to the
right, and entered the forest with long strides.
Once in the forest he slackened his pace, and began a careful
examination of all the trees, advancing, step by step, as though
seeking and following a mysterious road known to himself alone. There
came a moment when he appeared to lose himself, and he paused in
indecision. At last he arrived, by dint of feeling his way inch by
inch, at a clearing where there was a great heap of whitish stones. He
stepped up briskly to these stones, and examined them attentively
through the mists of night, as though he were passing them in review. A
large tree, covered with those excrescences which are the warts of
vegetation, stood a few paces distant from the pile of stones. He went
up to this tree and passed his hand over the bark of the trunk, as
though seeking to recognize and count all the warts.
Opposite this tree, which was an ash, there was a chestnut-tree,
suffering from a peeling of the bark, to which a band of zinc had been
nailed by way of dressing. He raised himself on tiptoe and touched this
band of zinc.
Then he trod about for awhile on the ground comprised in the space
between the tree and the heap of stones, like a person who is trying to
assure himself that the soil has not recently been disturbed.
That done, he took his bearings, and resumed his march through the
forest.
It was the man who had just met Cosette.
As he walked through the thicket in the direction of Montfermeil, he
had espied that tiny shadow moving with a groan, depositing a burden on
the ground, then taking it up and setting out again. He drew near, and
perceived that it was a very young child, laden with an enormous bucket
of water. Then he approached the child, and silently grasped the handle
of the bucket.
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