VOLUME III - BOOK EIGHTH - THE WICKED POOR MAN - CHAPTER XII. The Use made of M. Leblanc's Five-Franc Piece

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_ Nothing in the aspect of the family was altered, except that the wife
and daughters had levied on the package and put on woollen stockings
and jackets. Two new blankets were thrown across the two beds.

Jondrette had evidently just returned. He still had the breathlessness
of out of doors. His daughters were seated on the floor near
the fireplace, the elder engaged in dressing the younger's
wounded hand. His wife had sunk back on the bed near the fireplace,
with a face indicative of astonishment. Jondrette was pacing
up and down the garret with long strides. His eyes were extraordinary.

The woman, who seemed timid and overwhelmed with stupor in the
presence of her husband, turned to say:--

"What, really? You are sure?"

"Sure! Eight years have passed! But I recognize him! Ah! I recognize
him. I knew him at once! What! Didn't it force itself on you?"

"No."

"But I told you: `Pay attention!' Why, it is his figure,
it is his face, only older,--there are people who do not grow old,
I don't know how they manage it,--it is the very sound of his voice.
He is better dressed, that is all! Ah! you mysterious old devil,
I've got you, that I have!"

He paused, and said to his daughters:--

"Get out of here, you!--It's queer that it didn't strike you!"

They arose to obey.

The mother stammered:--

"With her injured hand."

"The air will do it good," said Jondrette. "Be off."

It was plain that this man was of the sort to whom no one offers
to reply. The two girls departed.

At the moment when they were about to pass through the door,
the father detained the elder by the arm, and said to her with
a peculiar accent:--

"You will be here at five o'clock precisely. Both of you.
I shall need you."

Marius redoubled his attention.

On being left alone with his wife, Jondrette began to pace the
room again, and made the tour of it two or three times in silence.
Then he spent several minutes in tucking the lower part of the
woman's chemise which he wore into his trousers.

All at once, he turned to the female Jondrette, folded his arms
and exclaimed:--

"And would you like to have me tell you something? The young lady--"

"Well, what?" retorted his wife, "the young lady?"

Marius could not doubt that it was really she of whom they were speaking.
He listened with ardent anxiety. His whole life was in his ears.

But Jondrette had bent over and spoke to his wife in a whisper.
Then he straightened himself up and concluded aloud:--

"It is she!"

"That one?" said his wife.

"That very one," said the husband.

No expression can reproduce the significance of the mother's words.
Surprise, rage, hate, wrath, were mingled and combined in one
monstrous intonation. The pronunciation of a few words, the name,
no doubt, which her husband had whispered in her ear, had sufficed
to rouse this huge, somnolent woman, and from being repulsive
she became terrible.

"It is not possible!" she cried. "When I think that my daughters
are going barefoot, and have not a gown to their backs! What!
A satin pelisse, a velvet bonnet, boots, and everything; more than
two hundred francs' worth of clothes! so that one would think
she was a lady! No, you are mistaken! Why, in the first place,
the other was hideous, and this one is not so bad-looking!
She really is not bad-looking! It can't be she!"

"I tell you that it is she. You will see."

At this absolute assertion, the Jondrette woman raised her large, red,
blonde face and stared at the ceiling with a horrible expression.
At that moment, she seemed to Marius even more to be feared than
her husband. She was a sow with the look of a tigress.

"What!" she resumed, "that horrible, beautiful young lady,
who gazed at my daughters with an air of pity,--she is that
beggar brat! Oh! I should like to kick her stomach in for her!"

She sprang off of the bed, and remained standing for a moment,
her hair in disorder, her nostrils dilating, her mouth half open,
her fists clenched and drawn back. Then she fell back on the bed
once more. The man paced to and fro and paid no attention to
his female.

After a silence lasting several minutes, he approached the
female Jondrette, and halted in front of her, with folded arms,
as he had done a moment before:--

"And shall I tell you another thing?"

"What is it?" she asked.

He answered in a low, curt voice:--

"My fortune is made."

The woman stared at him with the look that signifies: "Is the
person who is addressing me on the point of going mad?"

He went on:--

"Thunder! It was not so very long ago that I was a parishioner of the
parish of die-of-hunger-if-you-have-a-fire,-die-of-cold-if-you-have-bread!
I have had enough of misery! my share and other people's share!
I am not joking any longer, I don't find it comic any more,
I've had enough of puns, good God! no more farces, Eternal Father!
I want to eat till I am full, I want to drink my fill! to gormandize!
to sleep! to do nothing! I want to have my turn, so I do,
come now! before I die! I want to be a bit of a millionnaire!"

He took a turn round the hovel, and added:--

"Like other people."

"What do you mean by that?" asked the woman.

He shook his head, winked, screwed up one eye, and raised his voice
like a medical professor who is about to make a demonstration:--

"What do I mean by that? Listen!"

"Hush!" muttered the woman, "not so loud! These are matters
which must not be overheard."

"Bah! Who's here? Our neighbor? I saw him go out a little
while ago. Besides, he doesn't listen, the big booby.
And I tell you that I saw him go out."

Nevertheless, by a sort of instinct, Jondrette lowered his voice,
although not sufficiently to prevent Marius hearing his words.
One favorable circumstance, which enabled Marius not to lose a word
of this conversation was the falling snow which deadened the sound of
vehicles on the boulevard.

This is what Marius heard:--

"Listen carefully. The Croesus is caught, or as good as caught!
That's all settled already. Everything is arranged. I have seen
some people. He will come here this evening at six o'clock. To
bring sixty francs, the rascal! Did you notice how I played that
game on him, my sixty francs, my landlord, my fourth of February?
I don't even owe for one quarter! Isn't he a fool! So he will come
at six o'clock! That's the hour when our neighbor goes to his dinner.
Mother Bougon is off washing dishes in the city. There's not a soul
in the house. The neighbor never comes home until eleven o'clock.
The children shall stand on watch. You shall help us. He will
give in."

"And what if he does not give in?" demanded his wife.

Jondrette made a sinister gesture, and said:--

"We'll fix him."

And he burst out laughing.

This was the first time Marius had seen him laugh. The laugh
was cold and sweet, and provoked a shudder.

Jondrette opened a cupboard near the fireplace, and drew from it an
old cap, which he placed on his head, after brushing it with his sleeve.

"Now," said he, "I'm going out. I have some more people that I
must see. Good ones. You'll see how well the whole thing will work.
I shall be away as short a time as possible, it's a fine stroke
of business, do you look after the house."

And with both fists thrust into the pockets of his trousers,
he stood for a moment in thought, then exclaimed:--

"Do you know, it's mighty lucky, by the way, that he didn't
recognize me! If he had recognized me on his side, he would not
have come back again. He would have slipped through our fingers!
It was my beard that saved us! my romantic beard! my pretty little
romantic beard!"

And again he broke into a laugh.

He stepped to the window. The snow was still falling, and streaking
the gray of the sky.

"What beastly weather!" said he.

Then lapping his overcoat across his breast:--

"This rind is too large for me. Never mind," he added, "he did
a devilish good thing in leaving it for me, the old scoundrel!
If it hadn't been for that, I couldn't have gone out, and everything
would have gone wrong! What small points things hang on, anyway!"

And pulling his cap down over his eyes, he quitted the room.

He had barely had time to take half a dozen steps from the door,
when the door opened again, and his savage but intelligent face made
its appearance once more in the opening.

"I came near forgetting," said he. "You are to have a brazier
of charcoal ready."

And he flung into his wife's apron the five-franc piece which
the "philanthropist" had left with him.

"A brazier of charcoal?" asked his wife.

"Yes."

"How many bushels?"

"Two good ones."

"That will come to thirty sous. With the rest I will buy something
for dinner."

"The devil, no."

"Why?"

"Don't go and spend the hundred-sou piece."

"Why?"

"Because I shall have to buy something, too."

"What?"

"Something."

"How much shall you need?"

"Whereabouts in the neighborhood is there an ironmonger's shop?"

"Rue Mouffetard."

"Ah! yes, at the corner of a street; I can see the shop."

"But tell me how much you will need for what you have to purchase?"

"Fifty sous--three francs."

"There won't be much left for dinner."

"Eating is not the point to-day. There's something better to be done."

"That's enough, my jewel."

At this word from his wife, Jondrette closed the door again,
and this time, Marius heard his step die away in the corridor
of the hovel, and descend the staircase rapidly.

At that moment, one o'clock struck from the church of Saint-Medard. _

Read next: VOLUME III: BOOK EIGHTH - THE WICKED POOR MAN: CHAPTER XIII. Solus cum Solo, in Loco Remoto, non cogitabuntur orare Pater Noster

Read previous: VOLUME III: BOOK EIGHTH - THE WICKED POOR MAN: CHAPTER XI. Offers of Service from Misery to Wretchedness

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