Chapter 111 one curve strategy

One thing needs to be said here, which is necessary for the pages we are about to read and for the pages we shall encounter hereafter. The author of this book—I am sorry to have to mention him personally—has been away from Paris for many years.The face of Paris has changed since he left.This new type of city was, in some ways, foreign to him.He need not say that he loved Paris, which was his spiritual home.The Paris of his youth, which he reverently preserved in his memory, was now only the Paris of old, thanks to many demolitions and reconstructions.Allow him to speak of the old Paris as if it still existed.The author is about to lead the reader somewhere and say, "There is such a house on such a street," whereas today there may be neither a house nor a street there.Readers may wish to investigate, if it does not bother them.As for him, he did not know the new Paris, but only the old Paris, which he narrated with cherished visions.It is a pleasure for him that some of the things he saw in China in the past are still preserved and have not completely disappeared.When people come and go on the land of their motherland, they always have an illusion in their hearts, thinking that those streets have nothing to do with them, these windows, these roofs, these doors have nothing to do with them, and these walls have nothing to do with them, These trees are just insignificant trees, the houses I never enter are also insignificant to me, and the stone pavement under my feet is just stones.However, once you leave your country in the future, you will feel how much you miss those streets, how much you miss those roofs, windows and doors, you will feel that those walls are indispensable to you, those trees are your dear friends, To realize that the houses you never entered are places where your mind wanders now, and that on those paving stones you left your guts, your blood, and your heart.You can't see all those places now, maybe you will never see them again, but you still remember their images, and you will find them charming enough to make your heart ache, and they will appear in front of your eyes like ghosts, making you feel sad. It's like seeing the Holy Land, all those places are, so to speak, France as they are, and you love them, and from time to time you recall them as they were, as they were in the old days, and you are stubborn about them, unwilling to change anything, because you miss them. The face of the motherland is like the voice and countenance of a loving mother.

Therefore, please allow us to face the present and talk about the past. After this level of explanation is clear, readers must keep it in mind.Now let's move on. Jean Valjean immediately left the main road, turned into the side streets, followed the most devious route possible, sometimes even turning his head suddenly, to see if he was being followed. This action is favored by trapped elk.One of the many advantages of this course of action is that, where tracks can be left, the tracks of the hooves going backwards can lead hunters and hounds astray.This is called "false escape" in hunting.

The moon was full that day.Jean Valjean was not inconvenienced by it.The moon was still very close to the horizon at the time, drawing large shades and suns across the street.Jean Valjean could hide on the dark side, walk along the houses and walls, and at the same time spy on the bright side.He perhaps underestimates that the dark side cannot be ignored.However, he expected that no one would follow him in the alleys around Poliver Street. Cosette walked away, the anguish of the first six years of her life having made her somewhat passive.Moreover, this feature, we will mention more than once in the future, she has long been accustomed to the unique behavior of this old man and the strange changes in her own destiny without knowing it.Besides, she felt always safe with him.

Although Cosette did not know where they were going, neither did Jean Valjean. He gave himself to God, just as she gave herself to him.He felt that he was also holding the hand of someone greater than himself, and he seemed to feel that there was an invisible master guiding him.Besides that, he had no fixed idea, no plan, no plan.He was not even quite sure whether it was Javert, and even if it was Javert, Javert did not necessarily know that he was Jean Valjean.Hasn't he already changed his outfit?Didn't people think he was dead?But what happened in the past few days has become a little strange.He could no longer wait and see.He resolved never to return to Gorbo's old house.Like a wild animal driven out of its den, he had to find a hole to hide temporarily, and then slowly find a place to rest.

Jean Valjean seemed to turn left and right in several circles in the Mouffet district. At that time, the residents of the district were asleep. They seemed to be still obeying the rules of the Middle Ages and being subject to the curfew. The method of combining the Street of Tax Collectors with the Street of Shavings, the Street of St. Victor's Pestle and the Street of the Hermit's Well is a clever strategy.There had been some rented houses in the area, but he couldn't even go in because he couldn't find any suitable ones.In fact, he was convinced that even if anyone tried to track him down, he would have lost his way long ago.

He was passing the police post at number 14, rue Pontoise, when eleven o'clock struck at the Chapel of Saint-Étienne-de-Mont.A little while later, from that instinct we have spoken of above, he turned and came back again.At this time, he saw three people following him, on the dark side of the street, one after another, passing under the street lamp of the post, which clearly illuminated them.One of the three men walked into the corridor of the post.The man in the lead looked very suspicious. "Come, child," he said to Cosette, and he left the Rue Pontoise hastily. He went around in a circle, turned to the Elder Passage, the door at the entrance of the alley was already closed due to the late hour, strode across Mujian Street and Crossbow Street, and walked into Post Station Street.

There was a crossroads at that place, where the Roland school is today, and where the Rue Neuve Saint-Geneviève forked. (Needless to say, the Rue Neuve Saint-Geneviève is an old street, and the Rue de la Poste does not see a mail-car every ten years. The Rue de la Poste was inhabited by potters in the thirteenth century. His real name is Crock Street.) The moonlight was illuminating the crossroads brightly.Jean Valjean hid in a doorway, thinking that if those people followed him, they would pass through the moonlight, so that he would not be blind. Sure enough, in less than three minutes, those people appeared again.There were four of them now, all tall men in long brown coats and round-brimmed hats, and carrying thick clubs in their hands.Not only their tall stature and big fists make people uneasy, but even their actions in the dark are very eerie, they look like four ghosts who have turned into gentlemen.

They came to the middle of the intersection, stopped, and gathered together, as if exchanging opinions.One of them, who seemed to be their leader, turned his head and pointed his right hand resolutely in the direction of Jean Valjean, while the other pointed in the opposite direction with an air of obstinacy.When the first turned his head, the moonlight was shining on his face, and Jean Valjean saw clearly that it was Javert.