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.
CHAPTER XI—OFFERS OF SERVICE FROM MISERY TO WRETCHEDNESS
Marius ascended the stairs of the hovel with slow steps; at the moment when he was about to re-enter his cell, he caught sight of the elder Jondrette girl following him through the corridor.
The very sight of this girl was odious to him; it was she who had his five francs, it was too late to demand them back, the cab was no longer there, the fiacre was far away.
Moreover, she would not have given them back.
As for questioning her about the residence of the persons who had just been there, that was useless; it was evident that she did not know, since the letter signed Fabantou had been addressed “to the benevolent gentleman of the church of Saint-Jacques-du-Haut-Pas.”
Marius entered his room and pushed the door to after him.
It did not close; he turned round and beheld a hand which held the door half open.
“What is it?” he asked, “who is there?” It was the Jondrette girl.
“Is it you?” resumed Marius almost harshly, “still you!
What do you want with me?”
She appeared to be thoughtful and did not look at him.
She no longer had the air of assurance which had characterized her that morning.
She did not enter, but held back in the darkness of the corridor, where Marius could see her through the half-open door.
“Come now, will you answer?” cried Marius.
“What do you want with me?”