CHAPTER V--WHICH WOULD BE IMPOSSIBLE WITH GAS LANTERNS

  At that moment a heavy and measured sound began to be audible at somedistance. Jean Valjean risked a glance round the corner of the street.Seven or eight soldiers, drawn up in a platoon, had just debouchedinto the Rue Polonceau. He saw the gleam of their bayonets. They wereadvancing towards him; these soldiers, at whose head he distinguishedJavert's tall figure, advanced slowly and cautiously. They haltedfrequently; it was plain that they were searching all the nooks of thewalls and all the embrasures of the doors and alleys.

  This was some patrol that Javert had encountered--there could be nomistake as to this surmise--and whose aid he had demanded.

  Javert's two acolytes were marching in their ranks.

  At the rate at which they were marching, and in consideration of thehalts which they were making, it would take them about a quarter ofan hour to reach the spot where Jean Valjean stood. It was a frightfulmoment. A few minutes only separated Jean Valjean from that terribleprecipice which yawned before him for the third time. And the galleysnow meant not only the galleys, but Cosette lost to him forever; that isto say, a life resembling the interior of a tomb.

  There was but one thing which was possible.

  Jean Valjean had this peculiarity, that he carried, as one might say,two beggar's pouches: in one he kept his saintly thoughts; in the otherthe redoubtable talents of a convict. He rummaged in the one or theother, according to circumstances.

  Among his other resources, thanks to his numerous escapes from theprison at Toulon, he was, as it will be remembered, a past master in theincredible art of crawling up without ladder or climbing-irons, by sheermuscular force, by leaning on the nape of his neck, his shoulders, hiships, and his knees, by helping himself on the rare projections of thestone, in the right angle of a wall, as high as the sixth story, if needbe; an art which has rendered so celebrated and so alarming that cornerof the wall of the Conciergerie of Paris by which Battemolle, condemnedto death, made his escape twenty years ago.

  Jean Valjean measured with his eyes the wall above which he espied thelinden; it was about eighteen feet in height. The angle which it formedwith the gable of the large building was filled, at its lower extremity,by a mass of masonry of a triangular shape, probably intended topreserve that too convenient corner from the rubbish of those dirtycreatures called the passers-by. This practice of filling up corners ofthe wall is much in use in Paris.

  This mass was about five feet in height; the space above the summit ofthis mass which it was necessary to climb was not more than fourteenfeet.

  The wall was surmounted by a flat stone without a coping.

  Cosette was the difficulty, for she did not know how to climb a wall.Should he abandon her? Jean Valjean did not once think of that. Itwas impossible to carry her. A man's whole strength is required tosuccessfully carry out these singular ascents. The least burden woulddisturb his centre of gravity and pull him downwards.

  A rope would have been required; Jean Valjean had none. Where was he toget a rope at midnight, in the Rue Polonceau? Certainly, if Jean Valjeanhad had a kingdom, he would have given it for a rope at that moment.

  All extreme situations have their lightning flashes which sometimesdazzle, sometimes illuminate us.

  Jean Valjean's despairing glance fell on the street lantern-post of theblind alley Genrot.

  At that epoch there were no gas-jets in the streets of Paris. Atnightfall lanterns placed at regular distances were lighted; they wereascended and descended by means of a rope, which traversed the streetfrom side to side, and was adjusted in a groove of the post. The pulleyover which this rope ran was fastened underneath the lantern in a littleiron box, the key to which was kept by the lamp-lighter, and the ropeitself was protected by a metal case.

  Jean Valjean, with the energy of a supreme struggle, crossed the streetat one bound, entered the blind alley, broke the latch of the little boxwith the point of his knife, and an instant later he was beside Cosetteonce more. He had a rope. These gloomy inventors of expedients workrapidly when they are fighting against fatality.

  We have already explained that the lanterns had not been lighted thatnight. The lantern in the Cul-de-Sac Genrot was thus naturally extinct,like the rest; and one could pass directly under it without evennoticing that it was no longer in its place.

  Nevertheless, the hour, the place, the darkness, Jean Valjean'sabsorption, his singular gestures, his goings and comings, all had begunto render Cosette uneasy. Any other child than she would have given ventto loud shrieks long before. She contented herself with plucking JeanValjean by the skirt of his coat. They could hear the sound of thepatrol's approach ever more and more distinctly.

  "Father," said she, in a very low voice, "I am afraid. Who is comingyonder?"

  "Hush!" replied the unhappy man; "it is Madame Thénardier."

  Cosette shuddered. He added:--

  "Say nothing. Don't interfere with me. If you cry out, if you weep, theThénardier is lying in wait for you. She is coming to take you back."

  Then, without haste, but without making a useless movement, with firmand curt precision, the more remarkable at a moment when the patrol andJavert might come upon him at any moment, he undid his cravat, passed itround Cosette's body under the armpits, taking care that it should nothurt the child, fastened this cravat to one end of the rope, by means ofthat knot which seafaring men call a "swallow knot," took the other endof the rope in his teeth, pulled off his shoes and stockings, whichhe threw over the wall, stepped upon the mass of masonry, and beganto raise himself in the angle of the wall and the gable with as muchsolidity and certainty as though he had the rounds of a ladder under hisfeet and elbows. Half a minute had not elapsed when he was resting onhis knees on the wall.

  Cosette gazed at him in stupid amazement, without uttering a word. JeanValjean's injunction, and the name of Madame Thénardier, had chilled herblood.

  All at once she heard Jean Valjean's voice crying to her, though in avery low tone:--

  "Put your back against the wall."

  She obeyed.

  "Don't say a word, and don't be alarmed," went on Jean Valjean.

  And she felt herself lifted from the ground.

  Before she had time to recover herself, she was on the top of the wall.

  Jean Valjean grasped her, put her on his back, took her two tiny handsin his large left hand, lay down flat on his stomach and crawled alongon top of the wall as far as the cant. As he had guessed, there stooda building whose roof started from the top of the wooden barricade anddescended to within a very short distance of the ground, with a gentleslope which grazed the linden-tree. A lucky circumstance, for the wallwas much higher on this side than on the street side. Jean Valjean couldonly see the ground at a great depth below him.

  He had just reached the slope of the roof, and had not yet left thecrest of the wall, when a violent uproar announced the arrival of thepatrol. The thundering voice of Javert was audible:--

  "Search the blind alley! The Rue Droit-Mur is guarded! so is the RuePetit-Picpus. I'll answer for it that he is in the blind alley."

  The soldiers rushed into the Genrot alley.

  Jean Valjean allowed himself to slide down the roof, still holding fastto Cosette, reached the linden-tree, and leaped to the ground. Whetherfrom terror or courage, Cosette had not breathed a sound, though herhands were a little abraded.