Marius was, in fact, a prisoner.
The hand which had seized him from behind and whose grasp he had felt
at the moment of his fall and his loss of consciousness was that of
Jean Valjean.
Jean Valjean had taken no other part in the combat than to expose
himself in it. Had it not been for him, no one, in that supreme phase
of agony, would have thought of the wounded. Thanks to him, everywhere
present in the carnage, like a providence, those who fell were picked
up, transported to the tap-room, and cared for. In the intervals, he
reappeared on the barricade. But nothing which could resemble a blow,
an attack or even personal defence proceeded from his hands. He held
his peace and lent succor. Moreover, he had received only a few
scratches. The bullets would have none of him. If suicide formed part
of what he had meditated on coming to this sepulchre, to that spot, he
had not succeeded. But we doubt whether he had thought of suicide, an
irreligious act.
Jean Valjean, in the thick cloud of the combat, did not appear to see
Marius; the truth is, that he never took his eyes from the latter. When
a shot laid Marius low, Jean Valjean leaped forward with the agility of
a tiger, fell upon him as on his prey, and bore him off.
The whirlwind of the attack was, at that moment, so violently
concentrated upon Enjolras and upon the door of the wine-shop, that no
one saw Jean Valjean sustaining the fainting Marius in his arms,
traverse the unpaved field of the barricade and disappear behind the
angle of the Corinthe building.
The reader will recall this angle which formed a sort of cape on the
street; it afforded shelter from the bullets, the grape-shot, and all
eyes, and a few square feet of space. There is sometimes a chamber
which does not burn in the midst of a conflagration, and in the midst
of raging seas, beyond a promontory or at the extremity of a blind
alley of shoals, a tranquil nook. It was in this sort of fold in the
interior trapezium of the barricade, that Éponine had breathed her
last.
There Jean Valjean halted, let Marius slide to the ground, placed his
back against the wall, and cast his eyes about him.
The situation was alarming.
For an instant, for two or three perhaps, this bit of wall was a
shelter, but how was he to escape from this massacre? He recalled the
anguish which he had suffered in the Rue Polonceau eight years before,
and in what manner he had contrived to make his escape; it was
difficult then, to-day it was impossible. He had before him that deaf
and implacable house, six stories in height, which appeared to be
inhabited only by a dead man leaning out of his window; he had on his
right the rather low barricade, which shut off the Rue de la Petite
Truanderie; to pass this obstacle seemed easy, but beyond the crest of
the barrier a line of bayonets was visible. The troops of the line were
posted on the watch behind that barricade. It was evident, that to pass
the barricade was to go in quest of the fire of the platoon, and that
any head which should run the risk of lifting itself above the top of
that wall of stones would serve as a target for sixty shots. On his
left he had the field of battle. Death lurked round the corner of that
wall.
What was to be done?
Only a bird could have extricated itself from this predicament.
And it was necessary to decide on the instant, to devise some
expedient, to come to some decision. Fighting was going on a few paces
away; fortunately, all were raging around a single point, the door of
the wine-shop; but if it should occur to one soldier, to one single
soldier, to turn the corner of the house, or to attack him on the
flank, all was over.
Jean Valjean gazed at the house facing him, he gazed at the barricade
at one side of him, then he looked at the ground, with the violence of
the last extremity, bewildered, and as though he would have liked to
pierce a hole there with his eyes.
By dint of staring, something vaguely striking in such an agony began
to assume form and outline at his feet, as though it had been a power
of glance which made the thing desired unfold. A few paces distant he
perceived, at the base of the small barrier so pitilessly guarded and
watched on the exterior, beneath a disordered mass of paving-stones
which partly concealed it, an iron grating, placed flat and on a level
with the soil. This grating, made of stout, transverse bars, was about
two feet square. The frame of paving-stones which supported it had been
torn up, and it was, as it were, unfastened.
Through the bars a view could be had of a dark aperture, something like
the flue of a chimney, or the pipe of a cistern. Jean Valjean darted
forward. His old art of escape rose to his brain like an illumination.
To thrust aside the stones, to raise the grating, to lift Marius, who
was as inert as a dead body, upon his shoulders, to descend, with this
burden on his loins, and with the aid of his elbows and knees into that
sort of well, fortunately not very deep, to let the heavy trap, upon
which the loosened stones rolled down afresh, fall into its place
behind him, to gain his footing on a flagged surface three metres below
the surface,—all this was executed like that which one does in dreams,
with the strength of a giant and the rapidity of an eagle; this took
only a few minutes.
Jean Valjean found himself with Marius, who was still unconscious, in a
sort of long, subterranean corridor.
There reigned profound peace, absolute silence, night.
The impression which he had formerly experienced when falling from the
wall into the convent recurred to him. Only, what he was carrying
to-day was not Cosette; it was Marius. He could barely hear the
formidable tumult in the wine-shop, taken by assault, like a vague
murmur overhead.
BOOK SECOND—THE INTESTINE OF THE LEVIATHAN