Part 165 (1/2)
It was the husband and wife taking counsel together.
Thenardier walked slowly towards the table, opened the drawer, and took out the knife. Marius fretted with the handle of his pistol.
Unprecedented perplexity! For the last hour he had had two voices in his conscience, the one enjoining him to respect his father's testament, the other crying to him to rescue the prisoner. These two voices continued uninterruptedly that struggle which tormented him to agony. Up to that moment he had cherished a vague hope that he should find some means of reconciling these two duties, but nothing within the limits of possibility had presented itself.
However, the peril was urgent, the last bounds of delay had been reached; Thenardier was standing thoughtfully a few paces distant from the prisoner.
Marius cast a wild glance about him, the last mechanical resource of despair. All at once a shudder ran through him.
At his feet, on the table, a bright ray of light from the full moon illuminated and seemed to point out to him a sheet of paper. On this paper he read the following line written that very morning, in large letters, by the eldest of the Thenardier girls:--
”THE BOBBIES ARE HERE.”
An idea, a flash, crossed Marius' mind; this was the expedient of which he was in search, the solution of that frightful problem which was torturing him, of sparing the a.s.sa.s.sin and saving the victim.
He knelt down on his commode, stretched out his arm, seized the sheet of paper, softly detached a bit of plaster from the wall, wrapped the paper round it, and tossed the whole through the crevice into the middle of the den.
It was high time. Thenardier had conquered his last fears or his last scruples, and was advancing on the prisoner.
”Something is falling!” cried the Thenardier woman.
”What is it?” asked her husband.
The woman darted forward and picked up the bit of plaster. She handed it to her husband.
”Where did this come from?” demanded Thenardier.
”Pardie!” e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed his wife, ”where do you suppose it came from?
Through the window, of course.”
”I saw it pa.s.s,” said Bigrenaille.
Thenardier rapidly unfolded the paper and held it close to the candle.
”It's in Eponine's handwriting. The devil!”
He made a sign to his wife, who hastily drew near, and showed her the line written on the sheet of paper, then he added in a subdued voice:--
”Quick! The ladder! Let's leave the bacon in the mousetrap and decamp!”
”Without cutting that man's throat?” asked, the Thenardier woman.
”We haven't the time.”
”Through what?” resumed Bigrenaille.
”Through the window,” replied Thenardier. ”Since Ponine has thrown the stone through the window, it indicates that the house is not watched on that side.”
The mask with the ventriloquist's voice deposited his huge key on the floor, raised both arms in the air, and opened and clenched his fists, three times rapidly without uttering a word.