TWO MEN IMPOSSIBLE TO FIND.
The enchantment, great though it was, did not efface other thoughts from Marius's mind. While the marriage arrangements were being made, and the fixed period was waited for, he made some troublesome and scrupulous retrospective researches. He owed gratitude in several quarters; he owed it for his father, and he owed it for himself. There was Thénardier, and there was the stranger who had brought him back to M. Gillenormand's. Marius was anxious to find these two men again, as he did not wish to marry, be happy, and forget them, and feared lest these unpaid debts of honor might cast a shadow over his life, which would henceforth be so luminous. It was impossible for him to leave all these arrears suffering behind him, and he wished, ere he entered joyously into the future, to obtain a receipt from the past. That Thénardier was a villain took nothing from the fact that he had saved Colonel Pontmercy. Thénardier was a bandit for all the world excepting for Marius. And Marius, ignorant of the real scene on the battle-field of Waterloo, did not know this peculiarity, that his father stood to Thénardier in the strange situation of owing him life without owing him gratitude. Not one of the agents whom Marius employed could find Thénardier's trail, and the disappearance seemed complete on that side. Mother Thénardier had died in prison before trial, and Thénardier and his daughter Azelma, the only two left of this lamentable group, had plunged again into the shadow. The gulf of the social unknown had silently closed again upon these beings. No longer could be seen on the surface that quivering, that tremor, and those obscure concentric circles which announce that something has fallen there, and that a grappling-iron may be thrown in.
Mother Thénardier being dead, Boulatruelle being out of the question, Claquesous having disappeared, and the principal accused having escaped from prison, the trial for the trap in the Gorbeau attic had pretty nearly failed. The affair had remained rather dark, and the assize court had been compelled to satisfy itself with two subalterns, Panchaud, alias Printanier, alias Bigrenaille, and Demi-Liard, alias Deux Milliards, who had been condemned, after hearing both parties, to ten years at the galleys. Penal servitude for life was passed against their accomplices who had escaped; Thénardier, as chief and promoter, was condemned to death, also in default. This condemnation was the only thing that remained of Thénardier, casting on this buried name its sinister gleam, like a candle by the side of a coffin. However, this condemnation, by thrusting Thénardier back into the lowest depths through the fear of being recaptured, added to the dense gloom which covered this man.
As for the other, the unknown man who had saved Marius, the researches had at first some result, and then stopped short. They succeeded in finding again the hackney coach which had brought Marius to the Rue des Filles du Calvaire on the night of June 6. The driver declared that on the 6th of June, by the order of a police agent, he had stopped from three P.M. till nightfall on the quay of the Champs Élysées, above the opening of the Great Sewer; that at about nine in the evening the gate of the sewer which looks upon the river-bank opened; that a man came out, bearing on his shoulders another man, who appeared to be dead; that the agent, who was watching at this point, had arrested the living man and seized the dead man; that he, the coachman, had taken "all these people" into his hackney coach; that they drove first to the Rue des Filles du Calvaire and deposited the dead man there; that the dead man was M. Marius, and that he, the coachman, recognized him thoroughly, though he was alive this time; that afterwards they got into his coach again, and a few yards from the gate of the Archives he was ordered to stop; that he was paid in the street and discharged, and the agent took away the other man; that he knew nothing more, and that the night was very dark. Marius, as we said, remembered nothing. He merely remembered that he had been seized from behind by a powerful hand at the moment when he fell backwards from the barricade, and then all was effaced for him. He had only regained his senses when he was at M. Gillenormand's.
He lost himself in conjectures; he could not doubt as to his own identity, but how was it that he, who had fallen in the Rue de la Chanvrerie, had been picked up by the police agent on the bank of the Seine, near the bridge of the Invalides? Some one had brought him from the market district to the Champs Élysées, and how,—by the sewer? Extraordinary devotion! Some one? Who? It was the man whom Marius was seeking. Of this man, who was his saviour, he could find nothing, not a trace, not the slightest sign. Marius, though compelled on this side to exercise a great reserve, pushed on his inquiries as far as the Préfecture of Police, but there the information which he obtained led to no better result than elsewhere. The Préfecture knew less about the matter than the driver of the hackney coach; they had no knowledge of any arrest having taken place at the outlet of the great drain on June 6; they had received no report from the agent about this fact which, at the Préfecture, was regarded as a fable. The invention of this fable was attributed to the driver; for a driver anxious for drink-money is capable of anything, even imagination. The fact, however, was certain, and Marius could not doubt it, unless he doubted his own identity, as we have just said. Everything in this strange enigma was inexplicable; this man, this mysterious man, whom the driver had seen come out of the grating of the great drain, bearing the fainting Marius on his back, and whom the police agent caught in the act of saving an insurgent,—what had become of him? What had become of the agent himself? Why had this agent kept silence? Had the man succeeded in escaping? Had be corrupted the agent? Why did this man give no sign of life to Marius, who owed everything to him? The disinterestedness was no less prodigious than the devotion. Why did this man not reappear? Perhaps he was above reward, but no man is above gratitude. Was he dead? Who was the man? What was he like? No one was able to say: the driver replied, "The night was very dark." Basque and Nicolette in their start had only looked at their young master, who was all bloody. The porter, whose candle had lit up Marius's tragic arrival, had alone remarked the man in question, and this was the description he gave of him: "The man was frightful."
In the hope of deriving some advantage from them for his researches, Marius kept his blood-stained clothes which he wore when he was brought to his grandfather's. On examining the coat it was noticed that the skirt was strangely torn, and a piece was missing. One evening Marius was speaking in the presence of Cosette and Jean Valjean about all this singular adventure, the countless inquiries he had made, and the inutility of his efforts; Monsieur Fauchelevent's cold face offended him, and he exclaimed with a vivacity which had almost the vibration of anger,—
"Yes, that man, whoever he may be, was sublime. Do you know what he did, sir? He intervened like an archangel. He was obliged to throw himself into the midst of the contest, carry me away, open the sewer, drag me off, and carry me. He must have gone more than a league and a half through frightful subterranean galleries, bent and bowed in the darkness, in the sewer, for more than half a league, sir, with a corpse on his back! And for what object? For the sole object of saving that corpse; and that corpse was myself. He said to himself, 'There is, perhaps, a gleam of life left here, and I will risk my existence for this wretched spark!' and he did not risk his existence once, but twenty times! And each step was a danger, and the proof is, that on leaving the sewer he was arrested. Do you know, sir, that this man did all that? And he had no reward to expect. What was I? An insurgent. What was I? A conquered man. Oh! if Cosette's six thousand francs were mine—"
"They are yours," Jean Valjean interrupted.
"Well, then," Marius continued, "I would give them to find that man again."
Jean Valjean was silent.