His glance resulted from his will, and his smile from his nature.
His first studies in his art had been directed to roofs. He had made great progress in the industry of the men who tear off lead, who plunder the roofs and despoil the gutters by the process called double pickings.
The circumstance which put the finishing touch on the moment peculiarly favorable for an attempt at escape, was that the roofers were re-laying and re-jointing, at that very moment, a portion of the slates on the prison.
The Saint-Bernard courtyard was no longer absolutely isolated from the Charlemagne and the Saint-Louis courts.
Up above there were scaffoldings and ladders; in other words, bridges and stairs in the direction of liberty.
The New Building, which was the most cracked and decrepit thing to be seen anywhere in the world, was the weak point in the prison.
The walls were eaten by saltpetre to such an extent that the authorities had been obliged to line the vaults of the dormitories with a sheathing of wood, because stones were in the habit of becoming detached and falling on the prisoners in their beds.
In spite of this antiquity, the authorities committed the error of confining in the New Building the most troublesome prisoners, of placing there “the hard cases,” as they say in prison parlance.
The New Building contained four dormitories, one above the other, and a top story which was called the Bel-Air (Fine-Air).
A large chimney-flue, probably from some ancient kitchen of the Dukes de la Force, started from the ground floor, traversed all four stories, cut the dormitories, where it figured as a flattened pillar, into two portions, and finally pierced the roof.
Guelemer and Brujon were in the same dormitory.
They had been placed, by way of precaution, on the lower story.
Chance ordained that the heads of their beds should rest against the chimney.
Thenardier was directly over their heads in the top story known as Fine-Air.
The pedestrian who halts on the Rue Culture-Sainte-Catherine, after passing the barracks of the firemen, in front of the porte-cochere of the bathing establishment, beholds a yard full of flowers and shrubs in wooden boxes, at the extremity of which spreads out a little white rotunda with two wings, brightened up with green shutters, the bucolic dream of Jean Jacques.
Not more than ten years ago, there rose above that rotunda an enormous black, hideous, bare wall by which it was backed up.
This was the outer wall of La Force.
This wall, beside that rotunda, was Milton viewed through Berquin.
Lofty as it was, this wall was overtopped by a still blacker roof, which could be seen beyond.
This was the roof of the New Building.
There one could descry four dormer-windows, guarded with bars; they were the windows of the Fine-Air.
A chimney pierced the roof; this was the chimney which traversed the dormitories.
The Bel-Air, that top story of the New Building, was a sort of large hall, with a Mansard roof, guarded with triple gratings and double doors of sheet iron, which were studded with enormous bolts.
When one entered from the north end, one had on one’s left the four dormer-windows, on one’s right, facing the windows, at regular intervals, four square, tolerably vast cages, separated by narrow passages, built of masonry to about the height of the elbow, and the rest, up to the roof, of iron bars.
Thenardier had been in solitary confinement in one of these cages since the night of the 3d of February.
No one was ever able to discover how, and by what connivance, he succeeded in procuring, and secreting a bottle of wine, invented, so it is said, by Desrues, with which a narcotic is mixed, and which the band of the Endormeurs, or Sleep-compellers, rendered famous.
There are, in many prisons, treacherous employees, half-jailers, half-thieves, who assist in escapes, who sell to the police an unfaithful service, and who turn a penny whenever they can.
On that same night, then, when Little Gavroche picked up the two lost children, Brujon and Guelemer, who knew that Babet, who had escaped that morning, was waiting for them in the street as well as Montparnasse, rose softly, and with the nail which Brujon had found, began to pierce the chimney against which their beds stood.
The rubbish fell on Brujon’s bed, so that they were not heard.
Showers mingled with thunder shook the doors on their hinges, and created in the prison a terrible and opportune uproar.
Those of the prisoners who woke, pretended to fall asleep again, and left Guelemer and Brujon to their own devices.
Brujon was adroit; Guelemer was vigorous.
Before any sound had reached the watcher, who was sleeping in the grated cell which opened into the dormitory, the wall had been pierced, the chimney scaled, the iron grating which barred the upper orifice of the flue forced, and the two redoubtable ruffians were on the roof.
The wind and rain redoubled, the roof was slippery.
“What a good night to leg it!” said Brujon.
An abyss six feet broad and eighty feet deep separated them from the surrounding wall.
At the bottom of this abyss, they could see the musket of a sentinel gleaming through the gloom.
They fastened one end of the rope which Brujon had spun in his dungeon to the stumps of the iron bars which they had just wrenched off, flung the other over the outer wall, crossed the abyss at one bound, clung to the coping of the wall, got astride of it, let themselves slip, one after the other, along the rope, upon a little roof which touches the bath-house, pulled their rope after them, jumped down into the courtyard of the bath-house, traversed it, pushed open the porter’s wicket, beside which hung his rope, pulled this, opened the porte-cochere, and found themselves in the street.
Three-quarters of an hour had not elapsed since they had risen in bed in the dark, nail in hand, and their project in their heads.
A few moments later they had joined Babet and Montparnasse, who were prowling about the neighborhood.
They had broken their rope in pulling it after them, and a bit of it remained attached to the chimney on the roof.
They had sustained no other damage, however, than that of scratching nearly all the skin off their hands.
That night, Thenardier was warned, without any one being able to explain how, and was not asleep.
Towards one o’clock in the morning, the night being very dark, he saw two shadows pass along the roof, in the rain and squalls, in front of the dormer-window which was opposite his cage.
One halted at the window, long enough to dart in a glance.
This was Brujon.
Thenardier recognized him, and understood.
This was enough.
Thenardier, rated as a burglar, and detained as a measure of precaution under the charge of organizing a nocturnal ambush, with armed force, was kept in sight.
The sentry, who was relieved every two hours, marched up and down in front of his cage with loaded musket.