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PRISONER
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 Eponine 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.
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