At nightfall, Javert had posted his men and had gone into ambush
himself between the trees of the Rue de la Barrière-des-Gobelins which
faced the Gorbeau house, on the other side of the boulevard. He had
begun operations by opening “his pockets,” and dropping into it the two
young girls who were charged with keeping a watch on the approaches to
the den. But he had only “caged” Azelma. As for Éponine, she was not at
her post, she had disappeared, and he had not been able to seize her.
Then Javert had made a point and had bent his ear to waiting for the
signal agreed upon. The comings and goings of the fiacres had greatly
agitated him. At last, he had grown impatient, and, _sure that there
was a nest there_, sure of being in “luck,” having recognized many of
the ruffians who had entered, he had finally decided to go upstairs
without waiting for the pistol-shot.
It will be remembered that he had Marius’ pass-key.
He had arrived just in the nick of time.
The terrified ruffians flung themselves on the arms which they had
abandoned in all the corners at the moment of flight. In less than a
second, these seven men, horrible to behold, had grouped themselves in
an attitude of defence, one with his meat-axe, another with his key,
another with his bludgeon, the rest with shears, pincers, and hammers.
Thénardier had his knife in his fist. The Thénardier woman snatched up
an enormous paving-stone which lay in the angle of the window and
served her daughters as an ottoman.
[Illustration: Snatched up a Paving Stone]
Javert put on his hat again, and advanced a couple of paces into the
room, with arms folded, his cane under one arm, his sword in its
sheath.
“Halt there,” said he. “You shall not go out by the window, you shall
go through the door. It’s less unhealthy. There are seven of you, there
are fifteen of us. Don’t let’s fall to collaring each other like men of
Auvergne.”
Bigrenaille drew out a pistol which he had kept concealed under his
blouse, and put it in Thénardier’s hand, whispering in the latter’s
ear:—
“It’s Javert. I don’t dare fire at that man. Do you dare?”
“Parbleu!” replied Thénardier.
“Well, then, fire.”
Thénardier took the pistol and aimed at Javert.
Javert, who was only three paces from him, stared intently at him and
contented himself with saying:—
“Come now, don’t fire. You’ll miss fire.”
Thénardier pulled the trigger. The pistol missed fire.
“Didn’t I tell you so!” ejaculated Javert.
Bigrenaille flung his bludgeon at Javert’s feet.
“You’re the emperor of the fiends! I surrender.”
“And you?” Javert asked the rest of the ruffians.
They replied:—
“So do we.”
Javert began again calmly:—
“That’s right, that’s good, I said so, you are nice fellows.”
“I only ask one thing,” said Bigrenaille, “and that is, that I may not
be denied tobacco while I am in confinement.”
“Granted,” said Javert.
And turning round and calling behind him:—
“Come in now!”
A squad of policemen, sword in hand, and agents armed with bludgeons
and cudgels, rushed in at Javert’s summons. They pinioned the ruffians.
This throng of men, sparely lighted by the single candle, filled the
den with shadows.
“Handcuff them all!” shouted Javert.
“Come on!” cried a voice which was not the voice of a man, but of which
no one would ever have said: “It is a woman’s voice.”
The Thénardier woman had entrenched herself in one of the angles of the
window, and it was she who had just given vent to this roar.
The policemen and agents recoiled.
She had thrown off her shawl, but retained her bonnet; her husband, who
was crouching behind her, was almost hidden under the discarded shawl,
and she was shielding him with her body, as she elevated the
paving-stone above her head with the gesture of a giantess on the point
of hurling a rock.
“Beware!” she shouted.
All crowded back towards the corridor. A broad open space was cleared
in the middle of the garret.
The Thénardier woman cast a glance at the ruffians who had allowed
themselves to be pinioned, and muttered in hoarse and guttural
accents:—
“The cowards!”
Javert smiled, and advanced across the open space which the Thénardier
was devouring with her eyes.
“Don’t come near me,” she cried, “or I’ll crush you.”
“What a grenadier!” ejaculated Javert; “you’ve got a beard like a man,
mother, but I have claws like a woman.”
And he continued to advance.
The Thénardier, dishevelled and terrible, set her feet far apart, threw
herself backwards, and hurled the paving-stone at Javert’s head. Javert
ducked, the stone passed over him, struck the wall behind, knocked off
a huge piece of plastering, and, rebounding from angle to angle across
the hovel, now luckily almost empty, rested at Javert’s feet.
At the same moment, Javert reached the Thénardier couple. One of his
big hands descended on the woman’s shoulder; the other on the husband’s
head.
“The handcuffs!” he shouted.
The policemen trooped in in force, and in a few seconds Javert’s order
had been executed.
The Thénardier female, overwhelmed, stared at her pinioned hands, and
at those of her husband, who had dropped to the floor, and exclaimed,
weeping:—
“My daughters!”
“They are in the jug,” said Javert.
In the meanwhile, the agents had caught sight of the drunken man asleep
behind the door, and were shaking him:—
He awoke, stammering:—
“Is it all over, Jondrette?”
“Yes,” replied Javert.
The six pinioned ruffians were standing, and still preserved their
spectral mien; all three besmeared with black, all three masked.
“Keep on your masks,” said Javert.
And passing them in review with a glance of a Frederick II. at a
Potsdam parade, he said to the three “chimney-builders”:—
“Good day, Bigrenaille! good day, Brujon! good day, Deuxmilliards!”
Then turning to the three masked men, he said to the man with the
meat-axe:—
“Good day, Gueulemer!”
And to the man with the cudgel:—
“Good day, Babet!”
And to the ventriloquist:—
“Your health, Claquesous.”
At that moment, he caught sight of the ruffians’ prisoner, who, ever
since the entrance of the police, had not uttered a word, and had held
his head down.
“Untie the gentleman!” said Javert, “and let no one go out!”
That said, he seated himself with sovereign dignity before the table,
where the candle and the writing-materials still remained, drew a
stamped paper from his pocket, and began to prepare his report.
When he had written the first lines, which are formulas that never
vary, he raised his eyes:—
“Let the gentleman whom these gentlemen bound step forward.”
The policemen glanced round them.
“Well,” said Javert, “where is he?”
The prisoner of the ruffians, M. Leblanc, M. Urbain Fabre, the father
of Ursule or the Lark, had disappeared.
The door was guarded, but the window was not. As soon as he had found
himself released from his bonds, and while Javert was drawing up his
report, he had taken advantage of confusion, the crowd, the darkness,
and of a moment when the general attention was diverted from him, to
dash out of the window.
An agent sprang to the opening and looked out. He saw no one outside.
The rope ladder was still shaking.
“The devil!” ejaculated Javert between his teeth, “he must have been
the most valuable of the lot.”