CAB RUNS IN ENGLISH AND BARKS IN SLANG.
The next day—it was June 3, 1832, a date to which we draw attention owing to the grave events which were at that moment hanging over the horizon of Paris in the state of lightning-charged clouds—Marius at nightfall was following the same road as on the previous evening, with the same ravishing thoughts in his heart, when he saw between the boulevard trees Éponine coming toward him. Two days running,—that was too much; so he sharply turned back, changed his course, and went to the Rue Plumet by the Rue Monsieur. This caused Éponine to follow him as far as the Rue Plumet, a thing she had never done before; hitherto, she had contented herself with watching him as he passed along the boulevard, without attempting to meet him: last evening was the first time that she ventured to address him. Éponine followed him, then, without his suspecting it: she saw him move the railing-bar aside and step into the garden.
"Hilloh!" she said, "he enters the house."
She went up to the railing, felt the bars in turn, and easily distinguished the one which Marius had removed; and she muttered in a low voice, and with a lugubrious accent,—"None of that, Lisette!"
She sat down on the stone-work of the railing, close to the bar, as if she were guarding it. It was exactly at the spot where the railings joined the next wall, and there was there a dark corner, in which Éponine entirely disappeared. She remained thus for more than an hour without stirring or breathing, absorbed in thought. About ten o'clock at night, one of the two or three passers along the Rue Plumet, an old belated citizen, who was hurrying along the deserted and ill-famed street, while passing the railing, heard a dull menacing voice saying,—
"I am not surprised now that he comes every evening."
The passer-by looked around him, saw nobody, did not dare to peer into this dark corner, and felt horribly alarmed. He redoubled his speed, and was quite right in doing so, for in a few minutes six men, who were walking separately, and at some distance from each other, under the walls, and who might have been taken for a drunken patrol, entered the Rue Plumet: the first who reached the railings stopped and waited for the rest, and a second after, all six were together, and began talking in whispered slang.
"It's here," said one of them.
"Is there a cab [dog] in the garden?" another asked.
"I don't know. In any case I have brought a bullet which we will make it eat."
"Have you got some mastic to break a pane?"
"Yes."
"The railings are old," remarked the fifth man, who seemed to have the voice of a ventriloquist.
"All the better," said the second speaker; "it will make no noise when sawn, and won't be so hard to cut through."
The sixth, who had not yet opened his mouth, began examining the railings as Éponine had done an hour ago, and thus reached the bar which Marius had unfastened. Just as he was about to seize this bar, a hand suddenly emerging from the darkness clutched his arm; he felt himself roughly thrust back, and a hoarse voice whispered to him, "There's a cab." At the same time he saw a pale girl standing in front of him. The man had that emotion which is always produced by things unexpected; his hair stood hideously on end. Nothing is more formidable to look at than startled wild beasts. Their affrighted look is hideous. He fell back and stammered,—
"Who is this she-devil?"
"Your daughter."
It was, in truth, Éponine speaking to Thénardier. Upon her apparition, the other five men, that is to say, Claquesous, Gueulemer, Babet, Montparnasse, and Brujon, approached noiselessly, without hurry or saying a word, but with the sinister slowness peculiar to these men of the night. Some hideous tools could be distinguished in their hands, and Gueulemer held a pair of those short pincers which burglars call fauchons (small scythes).
"Well, what are you doing here? What do you want? Are you mad?" Thénardier exclaimed, as far as is possible to exclaim in a whisper. "Have you come to prevent us from working?"
Éponine burst into a laugh and leaped on his neck. "I am here, my little papa, because I am here; are not people allowed to sit down on the stones at present? It is you who oughtn't to be here; and what have you come to do, since it is a biscuit? I told Magnon so, and there is nothing to be done here. But embrace me, my good little papa, it is such a time since I saw you. You are out, then?"
Thénardier tried to free himself from Éponine's arms, and growled,—
"There, there, you have embraced me. Yes, I am out, and not in. Now be off."
But Éponine did not loose her hold, and redoubled her caresses.
"My dear papa, how ever did you manage? You must have been very clever to get out of that scrape, so tell me all about it. And where is mamma? Give me some news of her."
Thénardier answered,—
"She's all right. I don't know; leave me and be off, I tell you."
"I do not exactly want to go off," Éponine said with the pout of a spoiled child; "you send me away, though I haven't seen you now for four months, and I have scarce had time to embrace you."
And she caught her father again round the neck.
"Oh, come, this is a bore," said Babet.
"Make haste," said Gueulemer, "the police may pass."
The ventriloquial voice hummed,—
"Nous n'sommes pas le jour de l'an,
A bécoter papa, maman."
Éponine turned to the five bandits:—
"Why, that's Monsieur Brujon. Good-evening, Monsieur Babet; good-evening, Monsieur Claquesous. What, don't you know me, Monsieur Gueulemer? How are you, Montparnasse?"
"Yes, they know you," said Thénardier; "but now good-night, and be off; leave us alone."
"It is the hour of the foxes, and not of the chickens," said Montparnasse.
"Don't you see that we have work here?" Babet added.
Éponine took Montparnasse by the hand. "Mind," he said, "you will cut yourself, for I have an open knife."
"My dear Montparnasse," Éponine replied very gently, "confidence ought to be placed in people, and I am my father's daughter, perhaps. Monsieur Babet, Monsieur Gueulemer, I was ordered to examine into this affair."
It is remarkable that Éponine did not speak slang; ever since she had known Marius that frightful language had become impossible to her. She pressed Gueulemer's great coarse fingers in her little bony hand, which was as weak as that of a skeleton, and continued,—"You know very well that I am no fool, and people generally believe me. I have done you a service now and then; well, I have made inquiries, and you would run a needless risk. I swear to you that there is nothing to be done in this house."
"There are lone women," said Gueulemer.
"No, they have moved away."
"Well, the candles haven't," Babet remarked; and he pointed over the trees to a light which was moving about the garret. It was Toussaint, who was up so late in order to hang up some linen to dry. Éponine made a final effort.
"Well," she said, "they are very poor people, and there isn't a penny piece in the house."
"Go to the devil," cried Thénardier; "when we have turned the house topsy-turvy, and placed the cellar at top and the attics at the bottom, we will tell you what there is inside, and whether they are balles, ronds, or broques [francs, sous, or liards]."
And he thrust her away that he might pass.
"My kind M. Montparnasse," Éponine said, "I ask you, who are a good fellow, not to go in."
"Take care, you'll cut yourself," Montparnasse replied.
Thénardier remarked, with that decisive accent of his,—
"Decamp, fairy, and leave men to do their business."
Éponine let go Montparnasse's hand, which she had seized again, and said,—
"So you intend to enter this house?"
"A little," the ventriloquist said with a grin.
She leaned against the railings, faced these six men armed to the teeth, to whom night gave demoniac faces, and said in a firm, low voice,—
"Well, I will not let you!"
They stopped in stupefaction, but the ventriloquist completed his laugh. She continued,—
"Friends, listen to me, for it's now my turn to speak. If you enter this garden or touch this railing I will scream, knock at doors, wake people; I will have you all six seized, and call the police."
"She is capable of doing it," Thénardier whispered to the ventriloquist and Brujon.
She shook her head, and added,—
"Beginning with my father."
Thénardier approached her.
"Not so close, my good man," she said.
He fell back, growling between his teeth, "Why, what is the matter?" and added, "chienne."
She burst into a terrible laugh.
"As you please, but you shall not enter; but I am not the daughter of a dog, since I am the whelp of a wolf. You are six, but what do I care for that? You are men and I am a woman. You won't frighten me, I can tell you, and you shall not enter this house because it does not please me. If you come nearer I bark; I told you there was a dog, and I am it. I do not care a farthing for you, so go your way, for you annoy me! Go where you like, but don't come here, for I oppose it. Come on, then, you with your stabs and I with my feet."
She advanced a step toward the bandits and said, with the same frightful laugh,—
"Confound it! I'm not frightened. This summer I shall be hungry, and this winter I shall be cold. What asses these men must be to think they can frighten a girl! Afraid of what? You have got dolls of mistresses who crawl under the bed when you talk big, but I am afraid of nothing!"
She fixed her eye on Thénardier, and said,—"Not even of you, father."
Then she continued, as she turned her spectral, bloodshot eyeballs on each of the bandits in turn,—
"What do I care whether I am picked up to-morrow on the pavement of the Rue Plumet stabbed by my father, or am found within a year in the nets of St. Cloud, or on Swan's Island, among old rotting corks and drowned dogs?"
She was compelled to break off, for she was attacked by a dry cough, and her breath came from her weak, narrow chest like the death-rattle.
She continued,—
"I have only to cry out and people will come, patatras. You are six, but I am the whole world."
Thénardier moved a step toward her.
"Don't come near me," she cried.
He stopped, and said gently,—
"Well, no; I will not approach you; but do not talk so loud. Do you wish to prevent us from working, my daughter? And yet we must earn a livelihood. Do you no longer feel any affection for your father?"
"You bore me," said Éponine.
"Still we must live; we must eat—"
"Burst!"
This said, she sat down on the coping of the railings and sang,—
"Mon bras si dodu,
Ma jambe bien faite,
Et le temps perdu."
She had her elbow on her knee, and her chin in her hand, and balanced her foot with a careless air. Her ragged gown displayed her thin shoulder-blades, and the neighboring lamp lit up her profile and attitude. Nothing more resolute or more surprising could well be imagined. The six burglars, amazed and savage at being held in check by a girl, went under the shadow of the lamp and held council, with humiliated and furious shrugs of their shoulders. She, however, looked at them with a peaceful and stern air.
"There's something the matter with her," said Babet; "some reason for it. Is she fond of the cab? It's a pity to miss the affair. There are two women who live alone, an old cove who lives in a yard, and very decent curtains up to the windows. The old swell must be a sheney, and I consider the affair a good one."
"Well, do you fellows go in," Montparnasse exclaimed, "and do the trick. I will remain here with the girl, and if she stirs—"
He let the knife which he held in his hand glisten in the lamp-light. Thénardier did not say a word, and seemed ready for anything they pleased. Brujon, who was a bit of an oracle, and who, as we know, "put up the job," had not yet spoken, and seemed thoughtful. He was supposed to recoil at nothing, and it was notorious that he had plundered a police office through sheer bravado. Moreover, he wrote verses and songs, which gave him a great authority. Babet questioned him.
"Have you nothing to say, Brujon?"
Brujon remained silent for a moment, then tossed his head in several different ways, and at length decided on speaking,—
"Look here. I saw this morning two sparrows fighting, and to-night I stumble over a quarrelsome woman: all that is bad, so let us be off."
They went away, and while doing so Montparnasse muttered,—
"No matter; if you had been agreeable I would have cut her throat."
Babet replied,—
"I wouldn't; for I never strike a lady."
At the corner of the street they stopped, and exchanged in a low voice this enigmatical dialogue.
"Where shall we go and sleep to-night?"
"Under Pantin [Paris]."
"Have you your key about you, Thénardier?"
"Of course."
Éponine, who did not take her eyes off them, saw them return by the road along which they had come. She rose and crawled after them, along the walls and the houses. She followed them thus along the boulevard; there they separated, and she saw the six men bury themselves in the darkness, where they seemed to fade away.