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WHICH POSSIBLY PROVES BOULATRUELLE'S INTELLIGENCE
On the afternoon of that same Christmas Day, 1823, a man
had walked for rather a long time in the most deserted part of
the Boulevard de l'Hopital in Paris.
This man had the air of a person who is seeking lodgings,
and he seemed to halt, by preference, at the most modest houses
on that dilapidated border of the faubourg Saint-Marceau.
We shall see further on that this man had, in fact, hired
a chamber in that isolated quarter.
This man, in his attire, as in all his person, realized the
type of what may be called the well-bred mendicant,--extreme wretchedness
combined with extreme cleanliness.
This is a very rare mixture which inspires intelligent hearts
with that double respect which one feels for the man who is very
poor, and for the man who is very worthy. He wore a very old and
very well brushed round hat; a coarse coat, worn perfectly threadbare,
of an ochre yellow, a color that was not in the least eccentric
at that epoch; a large waistcoat with pockets of a venerable cut;
black breeches, worn gray at the knee, stockings of black worsted;
and thick shoes with copper buckles. He would have been pronounced
a preceptor in some good family, returned from the emigration.
He would have been taken for more than sixty years of age,
from his perfectly white hair, his wrinkled brow, his livid lips,
and his countenance, where everything breathed depression and
weariness of life.
Judging from his firm tread, from the singular vigor which
stamped all his movements, he would have hardly been thought fifty.
The wrinkles on his brow were well placed, and would have
disposed in his favor any one who observed him attentively.
His lip contracted with a strange fold which seemed severe,
and which was humble.
There was in the depth of his glance an indescribable melancholy
serenity. In his left hand he carried a little bundle tied up
in a handkerchief; in his right he leaned on a sort of a cudgel,
cut from some hedge. This stick had been carefully trimmed, and
had an air that was not too threatening; the most had been made
of its knots, and it had received a coral-like head, made from
red wax:
it was a cudgel, and it seemed to be a cane.
There are but few passers-by on that boulevard, particularly
in the winter.
The man seemed to avoid them rather than to seek them, but
this without any affectation.
At that epoch, King Louis XVIII.
went nearly every day to Choisy-le-Roi: it was one of his
favorite excursions.
Towards two o'clock, almost invariably, the royal carriage
and cavalcade was seen to pass at full speed along the Boulevard
de l'Hopital.
This served in lieu of a watch or clock to the poor women
of the quarter who said, "It is two o'clock; there he is
returning to the Tuileries."
And some rushed forward, and others drew up in line, for a
passing king always creates a tumult; besides, the appearance
and disappearance of Louis XVIII.
produced a certain effect in the streets of Paris. It was
rapid but majestic.
This impotent king had a taste for a fast gallop; as he was
not able to walk, he wished to run:
that cripple would gladly have had himself drawn by the lightning.
He passed, pacific and severe, in the midst of naked swords.
His massive couch, all covered with gilding, with great branches
of lilies painted on the panels, thundered noisily along.
There was hardly time to cast a glance upon it.
In the rear angle on the right there was visible on tufted
cushions of white satin a large, firm, and ruddy face, a brow
freshly powdered a l'oiseau royal, a proud, hard, crafty eye,
the smile of an educated man, two great epaulets with bullion
fringe floating over a bourgeois coat, the Golden Fleece, the
cross of Saint Louis, the cross of the Legion of Honor, the silver
plaque of the Saint-Esprit, a huge belly, and a wide blue ribbon:
it was the king.
Outside of Paris, he held his hat decked with white ostrich
plumes on his knees enwrapped in high English gaiters; when he
re-entered the city, he put on his hat and saluted rarely; he
stared coldly at the people, and they returned it in kind. When
he appeared for the first time in the Saint-Marceau quarter, the
whole success which he produced is contained in this remark of
an inhabitant of the faubourg to his comrade, "That big fellow
yonder is the government."
This infallible passage of the king at the same hour was,
therefore, the daily event of the Boulevard de l'Hopital.
The promenader in the yellow coat evidently did not belong
in the quarter, and probably did not belong in Paris, for he was
ignorant as to this detail.
When, at two o'clock, the royal carriage, surrounded by a
squadron of the body-guard all covered with silver lace, debouched
on the boulevard, after having made the turn of the Salpetriere,
he appeared surprised and almost alarmed. There was no one but
himself in this cross-lane. He drew up hastily behind the corner
of the wall of an enclosure, though this did not prevent M. le
Duc de Havre from spying him out.
M. le Duc de Havre, as captain of the guard on duty that day,
was seated in the carriage, opposite the king.
He said to his Majesty, "Yonder is an evil-looking man."
Members of the police, who were clearing the king's route,
took equal note of him: one of them received an order to follow
him.
But the man plunged into the deserted little streets of the
faubourg, and as twilight was beginning to fall, the agent lost
trace of him, as is stated in a report addressed that same evening
to M. le Comte d'Angles, Minister of State, Prefect of Police.
When the man in the yellow coat had thrown the agent off his
track, he redoubled his pace, not without turning round many a
time to assure himself that he was not being followed.
At a quarter-past four, that is to say, when night was fully
come, he passed in front of the theatre of the Porte Saint-Martin,
where The Two Convicts was being played that day.
This poster, illuminated by the theatre lanterns, struck him;
for, although he was walking rapidly, he halted to read it. An
instant later he was in the blind alley of La Planchette, and
he entered the Plat d'Etain [the Pewter Platter], where the office
of the coach for Lagny was then situated.
This coach set out at half-past four.
The horses were harnessed, and the travellers, summoned by
the coachman, were hastily climbing the lofty iron ladder of the
vehicle.
The man inquired:--
"Have you a place?"
"Only one--beside me on the box," said the coachman.
"I will take it."
"Climb up."
Nevertheless, before setting out, the coachman cast a glance
at the traveller's shabby dress, at the diminutive size of his
bundle, and made him pay his fare.
"Are you going as far as Lagny?" demanded the coachman.
"Yes," said the man.
The traveller paid to Lagny.
They started.
When they had passed the barrier, the coachman tried to enter
into conversation, but the traveller only replied in monosyllables.
The coachman took to whistling and swearing at his horses.
The coachman wrapped himself up in his cloak.
It was cold. The man did not appear to be thinking of that.
Thus they passed Gournay and Neuilly-sur-Marne.
Towards six o'clock in the evening they reached Chelles.
The coachman drew up in front of the carters' inn installed
in the ancient buildings of the Royal Abbey, to give his horses
a breathing spell.
"I get down here," said the man.
He took his bundle and his cudgel and jumped down from the
vehicle.
An instant later he had disappeared.
He did not enter the inn.
When the coach set out for Lagny a few minutes later, it did
not encounter him in the principal street of Chelles.
The coachman turned to the inside travellers.
"There," said he, "is a man who does not belong
here, for I do not know him.
He had not the air of owning a sou, but he does not consider
money; he pays to Lagny, and he goes only as far as Chelles. It
is night; all the houses are shut; he does not enter the inn,
and he is not to be found.
So he has dived through the earth."
The man had not plunged into the earth, but he had gone with
great strides through the dark, down the principal street of Chelles,
then he had turned to the right before reaching the church, into
the cross-road leading to Montfermeil, like a person who was acquainted
with the country and had been there before.
He followed this road rapidly.
At the spot where it is intersected by the ancient tree-bordered
road which runs from Gagny to Lagny, he heard people coming.
He concealed himself precipitately in a ditch, and there waited
until the passers-by were at a distance. The precaution was nearly
superfluous, however; for, as we have already said, it was a very
dark December night.
Not more than two or three stars were visible in the sky.
It is at this point that the ascent of the hill begins.
The man did not return to the road to Montfermeil; he struck
across the fields to the right, and entered the forest with long
strides.
Once in the forest he slackened his pace, and began a careful
examination of all the trees, advancing, step by step, as though
seeking and following a mysterious road known to himself alone.
There came a moment when he appeared to lose himself, and he paused
in indecision.
At last he arrived, by dint of feeling his way inch by inch,
at a clearing where there was a great heap of whitish stones.
He stepped up briskly to these stones, and examined them attentively
through the mists of night, as though he were passing them in
review. A large tree, covered with those excrescences which are
the warts of vegetation, stood a few paces distant from the pile
of stones. He went up to this tree and passed his hand over the
bark of the trunk, as though seeking to recognize and count all
the warts.
Opposite this tree, which was an ash, there was a chestnut-tree,
suffering from a peeling of the bark, to which a band of zinc
had been nailed by way of dressing.
He raised himself on tiptoe and touched this band of zinc.
Then he trod about for awhile on the ground comprised in the
space between the tree and the heap of stones, like a person who
is trying to assure himself that the soil has not recently been
disturbed.
That done, he took his bearings, and resumed his march through
the forest.
It was the man who had just met Cosette.
As he walked through the thicket in the direction of Montfermeil,
he had espied that tiny shadow moving with a groan, depositing
a burden on the ground, then taking it up and setting out again.
He drew near, and perceived that it was a very young child, laden
with an enormous bucket of water.
Then he approached the child, and silently grasped the handle
of the bucket.
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