“Sir, would those mice eat us?”
“Wouldn’t they just!” ejaculated Gavroche.
The child’s terror had reached its climax.
But Gavroche added:—
“Don’t be afraid.
They can’t get in.
And besides, I’m here!
Here, catch hold of my hand.
Hold your tongue and shut your peepers!”
At the same time Gavroche grasped the little fellow’s hand across his brother.
The child pressed the hand close to him, and felt reassured.
Courage and strength have these mysterious ways of communicating themselves.
Silence reigned round them once more, the sound of their voices had frightened off the rats; at the expiration of a few minutes, they came raging back, but in vain, the three little fellows were fast asleep and heard nothing more.
The hours of the night fled away.
Darkness covered the vast Place de la Bastille.
A wintry gale, which mingled with the rain, blew in gusts, the patrol searched all the doorways, alleys, enclosures, and obscure nooks, and in their search for nocturnal vagabonds they passed in silence before the elephant; the monster, erect, motionless, staring open-eyed into the shadows, had the appearance of dreaming happily over his good deed; and sheltered from heaven and from men the three poor sleeping children.
In order to understand what is about to follow, the reader must remember, that, at that epoch, the Bastille guard-house was situated at the other end of the square, and that what took place in the vicinity of the elephant could neither be seen nor heard by the sentinel.
Towards the end of that hour which immediately precedes the dawn, a man turned from the Rue Saint-Antoine at a run, made the circuit of the enclosure of the column of July, and glided between the palings until he was underneath the belly of the elephant.
If any light had illuminated that man, it might have been divined from the thorough manner in which he was soaked that he had passed the night in the rain.
Arrived beneath the elephant, he uttered a peculiar cry, which did not belong to any human tongue, and which a paroquet alone could have imitated.
Twice he repeated this cry, of whose orthography the following barely conveys an idea:—
“Kirikikiou!”
At the second cry, a clear, young, merry voice responded from the belly of the elephant:—
“Yes!”
Almost immediately, the plank which closed the hole was drawn aside, and gave passage to a child who descended the elephant’s leg, and fell briskly near the man.
It was Gavroche.
The man was Montparnasse.
As for his cry of Kirikikiou,—that was, doubtless, what the child had meant, when he said:—
“You will ask for Monsieur Gavroche.”
On hearing it, he had waked with a start, had crawled out of his “alcove,” pushing apart the netting a little, and carefully drawing it together again, then he had opened the trap, and descended.
The man and the child recognized each other silently amid the gloom: Montparnasse confined himself to the remark:—
“We need you.
Come, lend us a hand.”
The lad asked for no further enlightenment.
“I’m with you,” said he.
And both took their way towards the Rue Saint-Antoine, whence Montparnasse had emerged, winding rapidly through the long file of market-gardeners’ carts which descend towards the markets at that hour.
The market-gardeners, crouching, half-asleep, in their wagons, amid the salads and vegetables, enveloped to their very eyes in their mufflers on account of the beating rain, did not even glance at these strange pedestrians.
CHAPTER III—THE VICISSITUDES OF FLIGHT
This is what had taken place that same night at the La Force:—
An escape had been planned between Babet, Brujon, Guelemer, and Thenardier, although Thenardier was in close confinement.
Babet had arranged the matter for his own benefit, on the same day, as the reader has seen from Montparnasse’s account to Gavroche.
Montparnasse was to help them from outside.
Brujon, after having passed a month in the punishment cell, had had time, in the first place, to weave a rope, in the second, to mature a plan.
In former times, those severe places where the discipline of the prison delivers the convict into his own hands, were composed of four stone walls, a stone ceiling, a flagged pavement, a camp bed, a grated window, and a door lined with iron, and were called dungeons; but the dungeon was judged to be too terrible; nowadays they are composed of an iron door, a grated window, a camp bed, a flagged pavement, four stone walls, and a stone ceiling, and are called chambers of punishment.
A little light penetrates towards midday.
The inconvenient point about these chambers which, as the reader sees, are not dungeons, is that they allow the persons who should be at work to think.
So Brujon meditated, and he emerged from the chamber of punishment with a rope.
As he had the name of being very dangerous in the Charlemagne courtyard, he was placed in the New Building.
The first thing he found in the New Building was Guelemer, the second was a nail; Guelemer, that is to say, crime; a nail, that is to say, liberty.
Brujon, of whom it is high time that the reader should have a complete idea, was, with an appearance of delicate health and a profoundly premeditated languor, a polished, intelligent sprig, and a thief, who had a caressing glance, and an atrocious smile.