A fierce breath rose from this abyss.
The flood in the river, divined rather than perceived, the tragic whispering of the waves, the melancholy vastness of the arches of the bridge, the imaginable fall into that gloomy void, into all that shadow was full of horror.
Javert remained motionless for several minutes, gazing at this opening of shadow; he considered the invisible with a fixity that resembled attention.
The water roared.
All at once he took off his hat and placed it on the edge of the quay.
A moment later, a tall black figure, which a belated passer-by in the distance might have taken for a phantom, appeared erect upon the parapet of the quay, bent over towards the Seine, then drew itself up again, and fell straight down into the shadows; a dull splash followed; and the shadow alone was in the secret of the convulsions of that obscure form which had disappeared beneath the water.
BOOK FIFTH.—GRANDSON AND GRANDFATHER
CHAPTER I—IN WHICH THE TREE WITH THE ZINC PLASTER APPEARS AGAIN
Some time after the events which we have just recorded, Sieur Boulatruelle experienced a lively emotion.
Sieur Boulatruelle was that road-mender of Montfermeil whom the reader has already seen in the gloomy parts of this book.
Boulatruelle, as the reader may, perchance, recall, was a man who was occupied with divers and troublesome matters.
He broke stones and damaged travellers on the highway.
Road-mender and thief as he was, he cherished one dream; he believed in the treasures buried in the forest of Montfermeil.
He hoped some day to find the money in the earth at the foot of a tree; in the meanwhile, he lived to search the pockets of passers-by.
Nevertheless, for an instant, he was prudent.
He had just escaped neatly.
He had been, as the reader is aware, picked up in Jondrette’s garret in company with the other ruffians.
Utility of a vice: his drunkenness had been his salvation.
The authorities had never been able to make out whether he had been there in the quality of a robber or a man who had been robbed.
An order of nolle prosequi, founded on his well authenticated state of intoxication on the evening of the ambush, had set him at liberty.
He had taken to his heels.
He had returned to his road from Gagny to Lagny, to make, under administrative supervision, broken stone for the good of the state, with downcast mien, in a very pensive mood, his ardor for theft somewhat cooled; but he was addicted nonetheless tenderly to the wine which had recently saved him.
As for the lively emotion which he had experienced a short time after his return to his road-mender’s turf-thatched cot, here it is:
One morning, Boulatruelle, while on his way as was his wont, to his work, and possibly also to his ambush, a little before daybreak caught sight, through the branches of the trees, of a man, whose back alone he saw, but the shape of whose shoulders, as it seemed to him at that distance and in the early dusk, was not entirely unfamiliar to him. Boulatruelle, although intoxicated, had a correct and lucid memory, a defensive arm that is indispensable to any one who is at all in conflict with legal order.
“Where the deuce have I seen something like that man yonder?” he said to himself.
But he could make himself no answer, except that the man resembled some one of whom his memory preserved a confused trace.
However, apart from the identity which he could not manage to catch, Boulatruelle put things together and made calculations.
This man did not belong in the country-side.
He had just arrived there.
On foot, evidently.
No public conveyance passes through Montfermeil at that hour.
He had walked all night.
Whence came he?
Not from a very great distance; for he had neither haversack, nor bundle.
From Paris, no doubt.
Why was he in these woods? why was he there at such an hour? what had he come there for?
Boulatruelle thought of the treasure.
By dint of ransacking his memory, he recalled in a vague way that he had already, many years before, had a similar alarm in connection with a man who produced on him the effect that he might well be this very individual.
“By the deuce,” said Boulatruelle, “I’ll find him again. I’ll discover the parish of that parishioner.
This prowler of Patron-Minette has a reason, and I’ll know it.
People can’t have secrets in my forest if I don’t have a finger in the pie.”
He took his pick-axe which was very sharply pointed.
“There now,” he grumbled, “is something that will search the earth and a man.”
And, as one knots one thread to another thread, he took up the line of march at his best pace in the direction which the man must follow, and set out across the thickets.
When he had compassed a hundred strides, the day, which was already beginning to break, came to his assistance.
Footprints stamped in the sand, weeds trodden down here and there, heather crushed, young branches in the brushwood bent and in the act of straightening themselves up again with the graceful deliberation of the arms of a pretty woman who stretches herself when she wakes, pointed out to him a sort of track.
He followed it, then lost it.
Time was flying.
He plunged deeper into the woods and came to a sort of eminence.
An early huntsman who was passing in the distance along a path, whistling the air of Guillery, suggested to him the idea of climbing a tree.