THE USE OF MARIUS'S FIVE-FRANC PIECE.
Marius judged that the moment had arrived for him to return to his observatory. In a second, and with the agility of his age, he was at the hole in the partition, and peeped through. The interior of Jondrette's lodging offered a strange appearance, and Marius was able to account for the peculiar light he had noticed. A candle was burning in a verdigrised candlestick, but it was not this which really illumined the room; the whole den was lit up with the ruddy glow of a brazier standing in the fire-place, and filled with incandescent charcoal; it was the heating-dish which the wife had prepared in the morning. The charcoal was glowing and the heating-dish red; a bluish flame played round it, and rendered it easy to recognize the shape of the chisel purchased by Jondrette, which was heating in the charcoal. In a corner, near the door, could be seen two heaps,—one apparently of old iron, the other of ropes, arranged for some anticipated purpose. All this, to a person who did not know what was going to occur, would have made his mind vacillate between a very simple and a very sinister idea. The room, thus lit up, resembled a forge more than a mouth of hell; but Jondrette, in this light, was more like a demon than a blacksmith.
The heat of the coal-fire was so great that the candle on the table was melted and guttering on the side turned toward it. An old copper dark-lantern, worthy of a Diogenes who had turned Cartouche, was standing on the mantel-piece. The heating-dish, which stood in the fire-place close to the decaying logs, sent its smoke up the chimney, and thus produced no smell. The moon, which found its way through the skylight, poured its whiteness on the purple and flashing garret, and to the poetic mind of Marius, who was a dreamer even in the moment of action, it was like a thought of heaven mingled with the shapeless dreams of earth. A breath of air, that penetrated through the broken pane, also helped to dissipate the smell of charcoal and conceal the heating-dish. Jondrette's den, if our readers remember what we have said about the house, was admirably selected to serve as the scene of a violent and dark deed, and as a covert for crime. It was the farthest room in the most isolated house on the most deserted Parisian boulevard; and if ambushes did not exist they would have been invented there. The whole length of a house and a number of uninhabited rooms separated this lair from the boulevard, and the only window in it looked out on fields enclosed by walls and fences. Jondrette had lit his pipe, was seated on the bottomless chair and smoking, and his wife was speaking to him in a low voice.
If Marius had been Courfeyrac, that is to say, one of those men who laugh at every opportunity, he would have burst into a roar when his eye fell on Mother Jondrette. She had on a bonnet with black feathers, like the hats worn by the heralds at the coronation of Charles X., an immense tartan shawl over her cotton skirt, and the man's shoes which her daughter had disdained in the morning. It was this attire which drew from Jondrette the exclamation, "That's right; I am glad to see that you are dressed, for it inspires confidence." As for Jondrette, he had not taken off the new coat which M. Leblanc had given him, and his dress continued to offer that contrast between trousers and coat which constituted in Courfeyrac's sight the ideal of the poet. All at once Jondrette raised his voice:—
"By the way, in such weather as this he will come in a hackney coach. Light your lamp and go down, and keep behind the front gate; when you hear the vehicle stop you will open the gate at once, light him upstairs and along the passage, and when he has come in here you will go down as quickly as you can, pay the coachman, and discharge him."
"Where is the money to come from?" the woman asked.
Jondrette felt in his pocket, and gave her five francs.
"What is this?" she exclaimed.
"The monarch which our neighbor gave us this morning," responded Jondrette with dignity, and added, "we shall want two chairs, though."
"What for?"
"Why, to sit down!"
Marius shuddered on hearing the woman make the quiet answer,—
"Well, I will go and fetch our neighbor's."
And with a rapid movement she opened the door and stepped into the passage. Marius had not really the time to get off the drawers and hide under his bed.
"Take the candle!" Jondrette shouted.
"No," she said, "it would bother me, for I have two chairs to carry. Besides, the moon is shining."
Marius heard the heavy hand of Mother Jondrette fumbling for his key in the darkness. The door opened, and he remained nailed to his post by alarm and stupor. The woman came in; the sky-light sent a moonbeam between two large patches of shade, and one of these patches entirely covered the wall against which Marius was standing, so that he disappeared. Mother Jondrette did not see Marius, took the two chairs,—the only two that Marius possessed,—and went off, noisily slamming the door after her. She re-entered the den.
"Here are the two chairs."
"And here is the lantern," the husband said; "make haste down."
She hastily obeyed, and Jondrette remained alone.
He placed the chairs on either side of the table, turned the chisel in the heating-dish, placed in front of the fire-place an old screen, which concealed the charcoal-pan, and then went to the corner where the heap of rope lay, and stooped down as if examining something. Marius then perceived that what he had taken for a shapeless heap was a rope-ladder, very well made with wooden rungs, and two hooks to hang it by. This ladder and a few large tools, perfect crowbars, which were mingled with the heap of old iron in the corner, had not been there in the morning, and had evidently been brought in the afternoon, during the absence of Marius.
"They are edge-tool makers' implements", Marius thought.
Had he been a little better acquainted with the trade he would have recognized, in what he took for tool-makers' gear, certain instruments that could force or pick a lock, and others that could cut or pierce,—the two families of sinister tools which burglars call "cadets" and "fauchants." The fire-place, the table, and the two chairs were exactly opposite Marius, and as the charcoal-pan was concealed, the room was only illumined by the candle, and the smallest article on the table or the chimney-piece cast a long shadow; a cracked water-jug hid half a wall. There was in this room a hideous and menacing calm, and an expectation of something awful could be felt. Jondrette had let his pipe go out,—a sign of deep thought,—and had just sat down again. The candle caused the stern and fierce angles of his face to stand out; he was frowning, and suddenly thrust out his right hand now and then, as if answering the final counsels of a dark internal soliloquy. In one of the obscure replies he made to himself he opened the table-drawer, took out a long carving-knife hidden in it, and felt its edge on his thumb-nail. This done, he put the knife in the drawer, which he closed again. Marius, on his side, drew the pistol from his pocket and cocked it, which produced a sharp, clicking sound. Jondrette started, and half rose from his chair.
"Who's that?" he shouted.
Marius held his breath. Jondrette listened for a moment, and then said laughingly,—
"What an ass I am! It is the partition creaking."
Marius kept the pistol in his hand.