Chapter 219 Seventeen Uses of Marius' Five Francs

Marius thought the time had come to resume his post on the watchtower.With the lightness of his age, in the blink of an eye, he was at the small hole in the wall. He watched. The interior of Jondrette's dwelling presented a strange spectacle, and Marius, seeing the source of the strange light he had just discovered, lit a candle in a verdigris candelabra, but the real light The house was lit not with candles, but with a fire full of coals in a rather large tin stove, the same stove that Madam Jondrette had prepared in the morning, which was placed in the fireplace, and the reflection of the coals lit the fire. The room was brightly lit, the fire was burning brightly, the furnace was red-hot, and the blue flames danced in the furnace, making it easy to see the blunt gun Jondrette bought in the Rue Pierre-Lombard. The shape of a chisel, it is reddened deep in the fire.He also saw two piles of things in the corner by the door, one pile seemed to be ironware, and the other pile seemed to be ropes, both of which seemed to be arranged in advance and kept there for later use.To an uninformed man, all this can cause his mind to vacillate between a very sinister and a very simple idea.The fiery cave was more like a smithy than the mouth of hell, but Jondrette in the flames was not a blacksmith but a devil.

The fire was so hot that the candle on the table melted on the side of the stove, and the wick burned on the slope.On the fireplace stood an old brass lantern with a shutter, good enough for Diogenes turned into Cartouche. The tin stove, which stood beside the dying charred logs in the hearth, fed its gas into the chimney, and no smell escaped. The white moonlight shines through the glass of the window, shining red light on the slums. For Marius, who is still haunted by poetry at the juncture of struggle, it seems that it is God's intention to meet the nightmare of the world. The puffs of cold air from the broken panes also helped to dispel the smell of coal and conceal the fire.

We have spoken of this old Gorbe house before, and the reader, if he can recall it, will know that the lair of Jondrette was the most appropriate choice for the scene of the murder, the scene of the crime.It was the backmost room of one of the loneliest houses in one of the most lonely avenues in Paris.In this kind of place, even if there had never been atrocities of kidnapping in the world, someone would have created it. The depth of the house and the number of unoccupied rooms cut off the den from the road, and its only window looked out onto a great heath surrounded by brick walls and wooden fences.

Jondrette lit his pipe and sat smoking in the battered chair.His woman was whispering to him. If Marius had been Courfeyrac, that is to say, a man who could find a joke in life at any time, he would not have been able to help laughing at the sight of Madame Jondrette.On her head she wore a black hat full of feathers, like those worn by the warriors at the ordination of Charles X.Over her cotton skirt she wore a jumbo scarf of bright and green checks, and on her feet were a pair of men's shoes, the same pair her daughter had complained about this morning.It was this outfit that Jondrette praised: "Good! You have changed! You have to gain people's trust, it is absolutely necessary!"

As for Jondrette himself, he has never taken off the oversized new coat that Mr. Bai gave him. His clothes continue to maintain the contrast between the coat and trousers, which is the so-called poet in Courfeyrac's mind. ideal. Suddenly, Jondrette raised his voice: "Exactly! I remembered. He must come in a carriage in this weather. You light this lantern, and take it downstairs. You go and stay behind the door below. As soon as you hear the carriage stop , and immediately opened the door, and when he came up, you watched the stairs and the aisle for him all the way, and when he entered the room, you quickly went downstairs again, paid the carriage fare, and sent the carriage back.”

"But what about the money?" the woman asked. Jondrette searched his pockets and gave her a five-franc coin. "Where did this come from?" she cried. Jondrette replied proudly: "This is the big head that the neighbor gave me this morning." He went on to say: "You know? There have to be two chairs here." "What are you doing?" "sit." Marius felt a shudder in his loins when he heard Madame Jondrette answer with ease: "Success! I'll go and get those two from the neighbor's house for you." Before she finished speaking, she opened the door and entered the corridor.

Before he could say anything, Marius jumped down from the chest of drawers and hid under the bed. "Take the candle," cried Jondrette. "No," she said, "it's not convenient, I have two chairs to move. The moon is shining." Marius heard Madame Jondrette's clumsy hands fumbling for his key in the dark.The door opened.He was stunned and had to stay where he was. Madame Jondrette entered. A ray of moonlight entered through the skylight, and on either side of the light were two great black shadows. The wall against which Marius was leaning was entirely in shadow, and thus concealed him.

Madame Jondrette, with her head held high, did not see Marius, took up the two chairs that Marius had only, and left, while the door slammed shut behind her. She returned to the slum: "Here are two chairs." "There's the lantern," said her husband. "Go down quickly." She hastily obeyed.Jondrette was left alone. He placed the chairs on either side of the table, turned the blunt chisel in the fire over, and placed an old screen in front of the fire to conceal the fire, and went to the corner where the heap of rope lay, Bending down, as if checking something.Marius saw now that what he had at first thought to be a formless mass turned out to be a well-made ladder, knotted with steps and two hooks.

The ladder, which was piled up behind the door among the piles of scrap metal, and some clumsy tools that looked like big iron rods, had not been in Jondrette's room in the morning, and had obviously been moved in the afternoon when Marius was out. Come and put it there. "These are the tools of a master blacksmith," thought Marius. Had Marius been more experienced in this field, he would have recognized, among what he called the blacksmith's tools, certain lock- and door-picking tools, and certain tools for cutting and hacking, which the two great classes of thieves call " The murder weapon of "Little Brother" and "Sweeping Light".

The fireplace, the table, and the two chairs were all facing Marius.The stove was shaded, and the room was lit only by the light of the candle, and every little rag on the table or on the fireplace cast tall black shadows.A pitcher with a missing spout covers half of the wall.The tranquility in the house made one feel unspeakably eerie, feeling that something dangerous was about to happen. Jondrette had extinguished his pipe--an important sign of concentration--and turned back and sat down again.The candlelight brought out the fierce and sinister curves of his face.Sometimes he frowned, and sometimes he opened his right hand hastily, as if he was asking and answering the conspiracy in his heart as the final question.During such a process of thinking repeatedly, he suddenly opened the drawer of the table, took out a long and pointed kitchen knife hidden inside, and tried the blade on his nails.After trying it, I put the knife back in the drawer and pushed it back up again.

On his part Marius, too, took his pistol from the right pocket of his vest and loaded the cartridge into the breech. When the pistol was shot into the chamber, it made a slight crisp sound. Jondrette was startled, and got up from his chair. "Who is it?" he called. Marius held his breath, Jondrette listened carefully, laughed, and said: "What a fool of me! It's the wall that's cracked." Marius still held the pistol in his hand.