Chapter 253 The Adventures of Three Prison Breaks

Here's what happened that same night in Raffles Prison: Barber, Brujon, Haizui, and Thenardier had already agreed to escape from prison, even though Thenardier was locked in a single cell.Barbour took care of himself that day, as we have already seen in his account to Gavroche on Mount Parnas. Mont Parnas should assist them from without. Brujon lived in the torture chamber for a month, during which time he did two things: first, he wove a rope; second, he matured a plan.In the past, the system in the prison was to allow the prisoners to deal with themselves. In the harsh place where they were imprisoned, the four walls were made of stone, and the roof was also made of stone. There is a couch, a ventilation hole blocked by iron bars, and a door nailed with iron sheets. This kind of place is called a prison, but some people think that the prison is too terrible.Now, the structure of this kind of place is: an iron gate, a ventilation hole blocked by iron bars, a cloth couch, a flagstone floor, a roof built with stones, and four walls built with stones. torture chamber.It was a little light in there at noon.This kind of room, we know in our hearts, is no longer a prison, but it still has its inconvenience, that is, it allows some people who should be engaged in labor to stay and use their brains.

Brujon, because he was fond of thinking, came out of the torture chamber with a rope.He was recognized as a rather dangerous figure in the Court of Charlemagne, and he was installed in the new building.The first thing he found in the new building was a sea mouth, and the second thing was a nail.Haizui means crime, and a nail means freedom. We should now have a complete conception of Brujon.This man, with a weak physique and a premeditated sad expression, is a well-polished hero, intelligent, cunning, with soft eyes and a cruel smile.His eyes are the expression of his will, and his smile is the expression of his nature.The first art he learned was on roofs, and he greatly developed the skill of pulling out lead, using what he called "cutting the stomach" to break up roof structures and chutes.

What made it more conducive to the escape attempt at that time was that some masons were lifting the slate tiles on the roof of the prison that day.The Court of St. Bernard was no longer completely separated from the Court of Charlemagne and the Court of Saint-Louis.A lot of scaffolding and ladders have been set up on it, that is to say, there are already some flyovers and flying ladders that can communicate with the outside world. The new building, which had been the prison's weak point, was cracked everywhere, and dilapidated to a degree unmatched in the world.The walls were so corroded by salt and salt that the vaulted dome of each dormitory had to be protected by a plank, for stones often fell from the top on the prisoners who slept in their beds.Although the building was dilapidated, people still made the mistake of keeping the most irritated prisoners, or, as the prison parlance said, the "big cases" in the new building.

The new building has four bedrooms stacked one above the other and a top floor called the Qishuang Building.A wide fireplace-chimney--perhaps the chimney of the former Duke of Raffles's kitchen--runs from the ground floor through the four stories, and divides the bedrooms in two, like a flat column, through the roof. . Haizui and Brujon share a dormitory.As a matter of caution, the two were placed on the floor below.The head of their bed both happened to rest against the chimney of the fireplace. Thenardier lived in the attic of the so-called Brilliant House, just above their heads. Pedestrians on the street, after passing the fire brigade's barracks and parked in front of the big car door of the Ban's house on St. Catherine's Garden Street, they can see a yard full of wooden pots with flowers and trees. The round pavilion, with its two wings, both with green shutters, had the pastoral feel of Jean-Jacques' dream.Not ten years ago, there was a tall black wall standing on top of the round pavilion, which looked very ugly, and the round pavilion was close to this naked wall.At the top of the wall is the patrol lane of Raffles Prison.

The wall behind the rotunda makes one imagine Milton appearing behind Belkan. Although the wall was high, there was still a darker roof protruding from the top of the wall, which was the roof of the new building.On the roof there are four skylights fully fitted with iron bars, which are the windows of the Qishuang Building.A chimney protruded from under the roof, and it was a chimney that passed through several floors of dormitories. The Qishuang building is on the top floor of the new building. It is a large attic with several doors with three layers of iron bars and board doors with iron sheets on both sides and oversized iron nails.We went in from the north, and there were the four skylights on the left, and on the right, facing the skylights, there were four rather large square iron cages. The four cages were separated, and there was a narrow passage between them. A chest-high wall topped by an iron grate reaching to the roof.

Thenardier had been kept alone in one of these iron cages since the night of February 3rd.It has never been found out how and with whom he conspired to obtain a bottle of the intoxicating liquor supposedly invented by Drew, for which the gang became known as the "Sleepers." In many prisons there are treacherous officials, half-officials, half-bandits, who assist in the escape, make false reports to the police authorities, and make money from it. On the night when the young Gavroche took in the two waifs, Brujon and Haizui learned that Barber had escaped that morning and would meet them in the street with Montparnasse.They got up quietly from the bed, and began to dig through the chimney by the side of their bed with the nail which Brujon had found.All the ashes fell on Brujon's bed, so that no one else could hear him.The wind and rain, mingled with thunder, were knocking doors here and there in their mortars, so that there was a frightful and useful sound in the prison.The awakened prisoners pretended to be asleep and let Haizui and Brujon move.Brujon is dexterous in his hands and feet, and Haizui is full of physical strength.The prison warden slept in a single room with an iron door facing the dormitory. Before he could hear the movement, the two fierce gangsters had already dug through the wall, climbed up the chimney, and broke through the barbed wire on the top of the chimney. , to the top of the roof.The rain and wind were coming harder and the roof was slippery.

"What a deserted evening!" said Brujon. A chasm six feet wide and eight feet deep ran between them and the patrol road.At the bottom of the chasm they saw the musket of a sentryman gleaming in the darkness.They took out the rope that Brujon had woven in the prison, tied one end to the iron bar that they had just twisted on the top of the chimney, threw the other end up the patrol road, crossed the gap with one arrow, and clasped their hands on the wall. , turned over and stepped up, tandem and back, slid down the rope, landed on a small roof next to the Ban’s house, then pulled back their rope, jumped into the yard of the Ban’s house, crossed the yard, pushed Open the small window on the top of the door of the concierge, twitch the rope hanging beside the small window, open the big car door, and enter the street.

It was less than three quarters of an hour since they got up and stood on the bed in the dark, holding a nail in their hands and having a plan in their minds. Before long they encountered Barber and Mount Parnas who were wandering nearby. Their rope, which had snapped in drawing it back, was still attached to the chimney-mouth on the roof.They had no other injuries except that the skin on their palms was almost wiped off. That night, Thenardier had received the news, and I don't know how he got it, and he couldn't sleep. At about one o'clock in the morning, the night was very dark, the rain was strong and the wind was violent, and he saw two figures on the roof, flashing through the skylight opposite his iron cage.One of them stopped for a moment on the skylight, but only for the blink of an eye.This is Brujon.Thenardier recognized it, he understood it.That's enough.

Thénardier was imprisoned and watched on charges of being a murderer who murdered with a weapon in the dark.There was always a soldier on duty walking up and down in front of his cage with a gun in his hands, changing shifts every two hours.The Qishuang Building is illuminated by a candlestick hanging on the wall.The prisoner had a pair of fifty-jin iron balls on his feet.Every day at four o'clock in the afternoon, a jailer brought two big-headed dogs—this method was still used at that time—to his iron cage, and brought a piece of black bread weighing two catties, a jar of cold water, a ladle full of grains, and a few grains. Vegetable bean soup was placed by his bed, and he inspected his shackles, knocking on the iron pieces.The man comes twice a night with his big dog.

Thenardier had obtained permission to leave something like a skewer in order to stick his bread in a chink in the wall, "to keep it from being eaten by the mice," he said.Since Thenardier was constantly under surveillance, no one felt that there was anything wrong with the skewer.It was not until later that everyone remembered that a jailer once said: "It would be better to just give him a wooden skewer." During the shift change at two o'clock in the morning, a veteran was removed and replaced by a new recruit.After a while, the man with the dog came to inspect and found nothing except that "Qiu Ba" was too young and "like a country bumpkin", so he left.Two hours later, at four o'clock, when it was time to change the shift again, the recruit was found lying like a stone beside Thenardier's cage, asleep.As for Thenardier, he is nowhere to be found.His shackles were broken and left on the tile floor.On the top of his iron cage, there was a hole, and above, in the roof, there was another hole.A board had been pried off from his bed, and perhaps taken, as it was never recovered.In that cell, a half-bottle of ecstasy wine was found, which was left over from the soldier, who had been doused with sweat medicine, and his bayonet was gone.

By the time all this was discovered, Thenardier was considered by all to be gone.In fact, he only escaped from the new building, not out of danger.His escape attempt is far from complete. When Thenardier went to the roof of the new building, he found that the piece of rope left by Brujon was still hanging on the iron bars on the chimney cowl, but the rope was too short for him to be like Brujon and the mouth of the sea. , Escape from the patrol road. As we turned from the Rue de Ballet into the Via Reina Sicily, we came across a small, squalid vacant lot on the right-hand side almost immediately.In this place, in the previous century, there had been a house, and now only the rear wall remained, which was really the dangerous wall of a dilapidated house, up to four stories high, erected between the adjoining houses.This remnant is not difficult to recognize, and now people can still see the two large square windows at the top. There is also a square rafter on the top of the window closest to the tip of the right wall in the middle, which is used as a shelf to withstand pressure. The ones on it have been infected by insects.From these windows one could see in the old days a high and gloomy wall, the wall of Raffles Prison, above which was the Patrol Road. After the house was destroyed, there was an open space facing the street. Half of the open space was surrounded by a fence supported by five stone bars. The wooden boards on the fence had rotted away.A small wooden shed was concealed in the fence, just below the dangerous wall that would not fall down.There is a gate in the fence, and a few years ago, there was a pin in the gate. It was on top of this dangerous wall that Thenardier arrived shortly after three o'clock in the morning. How did he come to this place?No one can tell or understand.Lightning had roughly been hindering him, as well as helping him.Did he use the tilers' ladders and scaffolding to go from roof to roof, pen to pen, bay to bay, first the building of the Court of Charlemagne, then of the Court of Saint-Louis? The building, the wall of the patrol road, where did they climb up to this dilapidated house from here?But on such a route, with many unresolvable articulation problems, it seems unlikely.Did he use the wooden board on his bed as a bridge, from the Qishuang building to the top of the patrol road wall, and then along the fence, lying on the ground, and crawling around the prison before reaching the end of this dilapidated house? Woolen cloth?But the wall of the patrol road in Raffles Prison is undulating. It is high and low at times. The height of the section close to Lamoignon's house is different from that of the section facing the paved street. There are steep walls and right angles everywhere, and the sentinels will not miss the shadow of a fugitive. Therefore, the route taken by Thenardier still does not make sense if it is explained in this way.Either way, escape seemed impossible.Thénardier desperately longs for freedom, so he turns the abyss into a shallow pit, the iron gate into a wicker fence, the man with crippled legs into an athlete, the paralyzed into a bird, the ignorance into intuition, and intuition into wisdom, wisdom Turning into a genius, did he improvise and invent a third method?No one ever knew. The miracle of jailbreaking is not always spelled out.He who escapes, let us repeat, often by inspiration, and in that subtle twilight which facilitates escape, often with stars and lightning, and the perseverance to seek his way out is as amazing as the witty words.We often ask, when speaking of a fugitive, "How did he get over the roof?" Likewise, when talking of Corneille, we often ask: "Where did he come up with that phrase?" What about the punchline 'death'?" In short, Thénardier, dripping with sweat and rain, with his clothes torn, his hands flayed, his elbows bleeding, and his knees torn, came to the "blade" of the dangerous wall— As the children imagined——he stretched out and lay there, exhausted.Between him and the street was a steep cut-off wall four stories high. The rope he was carrying was too short. He could only wait, his face was ashen, his strength was exhausted, his hopes just now were all in vain, although he was still under the cover of night, he kept thinking that it would be dawn soon, thinking that the clock of the nearby St. Paul's Church would soon strike four o'clock Then, when the sentry will change its shift, the sentry will be found lying under the pierced roof, gazing distraught at the terrible depths below him, at the dim light of the street lamps. , looking at the wet, dark street, where one wants to step on but is dangerous, which can bring death and freedom. He wondered whether the three men who had escaped with him had escaped, whether they were waiting for him, whether they would come to rescue him.He listened carefully.Except for a patrol, no one had passed the street since he had been up there.Almost all the greengrocers who go to the market from Montreuil, Charonne, Vincennes, Bercy go by the Rue Saint-Antoine. It's four o'clock.Thenardier's hairs stood on end.Not long after, the prison was filled with the kind of chaotic and disturbing sounds that must occur after the discovery of a prison escape.The doors were opened and closed, the screams of the iron gates, the shouts of the guards, the hoarse voices of the jailers, the clatter of gun butts on the flagstones of the courtyard, all reached his ears.Numerous lights went up and down on the iron windows of those dormitories, torches ran on the top of the new building, and firefighters from the nearby barracks were also called.The torches shine on their helmets, and they come and go against the wind and rain on the roofs here and there.At the same time, Thenardier saw, in the direction of the Place de la Bastille, a patch of gray color that was gradually turning white on the horizon of the misty mist. As for him, stuck on the top of the ten-inch wide wall, lying under the pouring rain, surrounded by Jedi on the left and right, unable to move, afraid of falling dizzily and being arrested again, his thoughts, like a bell hammer, Swaying back and forth between these two thoughts: if you fall, you will die, if you don’t move, you will be arrested. In the midst of his grief and despair, he saw—the street was still quite dark at the time—a man coming along the fence from the other side of the paved street, and stopping under the place where his Thenardier seemed to hang from the sky. on the clearing.After this person arrived, a second person followed, also stealthily, followed by a third, and then a fourth.When these people were assembled, one of them lifted the pin on the gate of the gate, and all four entered the pen with the wooden shed.They all happened to be standing under Thenardier.These people obviously chose this open space as the place for their conversation in order not to be seen by passers-by on the street and the sentinel who guarded the lookout of Raffles Prison a few steps away.It should also be remarked that the heavy rain at that time had sealed the sentinel in his sentry box.Thenardier, unable to see their faces clearly, could only concentrate the little hopeless attention of a hopeless man who feels that his life is hopeless, and listened to their conversation with his ears open. Thenardier seemed to see a glimmer of hope before him. These people were talking black. The first said softly, but clearly: "Let's go. What are we doing here?" The second replied: "It's raining until the will-o'-the-wisps. And the police are coming. There's a soldier on guard over there. We'll be caught here." The two words "Icigo" and "icicaille" are all spoken as "here", and the first word belongs to the slang of the Piazza, the second belongs to the slang of the Temple. This was tantamount to a light for Thenardier.From "icigo" he recognized Brujon, who was originally a gangster in the neighborhood of the gate, and from "icicaille" he recognized Barber, who had worked in many businesses and sold second-hand goods in the Great Temple. The old slang of the Great Century can only be spoken by people in the area of ​​the Great Temple, and Barbour is even the only person who can speak this slang in a proper way.Thenardier would never have recognized him if he hadn't said "ici-caille" because he had changed his accent completely. At this point a third person intervened and said: "Don't worry, wait a little longer. It's not sure he doesn't need us yet." The words were spoken in French, and Thénardier recognized Mont-Parnas when he heard them, a man whose nobility consists in being able to understand every kind of slang without speaking it himself. The fourth man said nothing, but his broad shoulders could not be concealed.Dana saw it at first glance.That's the mouth of the sea. Brujon objected, almost impatiently, but all the while saying in a low voice: "What are you telling us? The innkeeper probably didn't get away with it. He didn't know the tricks here, he did! Tear up shirts, crack upholstery sheets, use them for a rope, dig holes in doors, make false papers, make false keys." , cut off the shackles, tied the rope and threw it outside, hid, and put on makeup, all of which required a little cleverness! This old man probably couldn’t do it, he doesn’t know how to work!” The difference between Barber's regular and classic jargon, which was always spoken by Praillet and Cartouche, and Brujon's bold, colorful, and out-of-the-box jargon, Racine's language is different from that of André Chenier.Barber went on to say: "Your innkeeper might have been caught on the spot. He'd have to be a little clever. He's only an apprentice. He might have been tricked by a spy, or even sold by a spy pretending to be a fellow. Listen, Barnas." Shan, did you hear the shouts in the prison? You saw the candlelight. He has been caught, don't worry! No problem, he has to go to his 20-year prison again. I am not afraid, I am Not cowards, you all know, but now we have to slip away, or we will be in trouble. Don't be angry, or come with us to drink a bottle of old wine." "Our friends are in trouble, we can't ignore it." Montparnasse muttered. "I tell you, he's lost!" said Brujon. "The innkeeper is worthless by now. There is nothing we can do. Let us go. Every moment I feel that a policeman has me in his hands." Montparnasse could only protest slightly, and it happened as follows: These four men, with that unfailing devotion common to gangsters, wandered about the prison of Raffles in spite of all dangers. All night long, I hoped to see Thenardier suddenly appear on a certain wall.But it was such a good night, the downpour cleared the streets everywhere, the cold was getting worse, their clothes were soaking wet, the soles of their shoes were going through, and there was a flurry of noises in the prison, and time passed Now, the patrols passed by again and again, hope gradually faded, fear gradually returned, all of which forced them to retreat.Montparnasse himself, perhaps Thénardier's son-in-law more or less, also conceded.After a while, they all dispersed.Thenardier stood on the top of the wall, out of breath, like the shipwreck of Medusa, who, on the raft, saw a ship in the distance and then disappeared on the horizon. He did not dare to shout, for if anyone heard him, it would be all over, and he had a plan, the last plan, a gleam of light; he took out of his pocket the piece of rope that he had untied from the chimney of the new building. Take it out and throw it into the circle of the wooden fence. The rope fell right at their feet. "A 'veuve,'" Barbour said. "My 'tortouse'!" said Brujon. They looked up.Thenardier stuck his head out a little. "Quick!" said Montparnasse, "do you still have your other rope, Brujon?" "exist." "Tie the two pieces together, and we'll throw him the rope, and he'll tie it to the wall, and that's enough for him to come down." Thenardier, at the risk of raising his voice, said: "I'm freezing." "I'll warm you up later." "I can't move." "You slide down, we catch you." "My hands are numb." "Tie a rope to the wall, and you can do it." "No." "We must have someone up there," said Parnas-Mont. "Four floors!" said Brujon. A pipe of plaster--the pipe for the stove of the man who formerly lived in the shed--runs up against the wall almost to the level of Thenardier's place.The chimney had many cracks, and was all broken, and had now collapsed, leaving only a trace.That pipe is pretty narrow. "We can go up here," said Montparnasse. "An 'orgue'!" said Barbour. "Drilling this chimney? No way! Must have a 'mion'." "There must be a 'mme'," said Brujon. "Where can I find the child?" Haizui said. "Wait," said Montparnasse, "I have a way." He pushed the gate slightly open, saw that there was no one in the street, went out quietly, closed the gate behind him, and ran in the direction of Place de la Bastille. Seven or eight minutes passed, but for Thenardier it was eight thousand centuries. Barber, Brujon, and Haizui had been clenching their teeth, and the door finally opened again. Mont Parnas, Shangqi Out of breath, he led Gavroche to appear.It was still raining, so the streets were deserted. Gavroche stepped into the fence and looked nonchalantly into the faces of the gangsters.The rain drenched in my hair.Haizui spoke to him first and said: "Baby, are you an adult?" Gavroche shrugged his shoulders and replied: "A 'mme' like me is an 'orgue', 'orgues' like you are 'mmes'." "What a talker this kid is!" said Barbour. "The children of Paris are not made of wet grass," said Brujon. "What do you want?" said Gavroche. Mount Parnas replied: "Climb up this chimney." "Take the widow," Barbour said. "And this tortoise must be tied up," continued Brujon. "On this wall," said Barbour again. "On the bar of that window," added Brujon. "What else?" asked Gavroche. "That's all!" Haizui replied. After carefully examining the ropes, chimneys, walls, and windows, the wild boy made that indefinable and contemptuous sound with his upper and lower lips, which meant: "What a big deal!" "There's a man up there who wants you to rescue him," Montparnasse said again. "Will you?" asked Brujon. "Stupid!" replied the boy, and as if finding the question too strange, he took off his shoe. Haizui picked up Gavroche and placed him on the roof of the barn, where the moth-eaten roofs flashed under the child's weight, and he reattached Brujon when he left on Mont Parnas. handed him the rope.The boy went up to the chimney, and there was a big gap in the chimney near the roof, and he slipped right in.While he was climbing, Thénardier, seeing his savior approaching and finding his way out, thrust his head towards the wall, and the faint light of dawn illuminated his sweat-soaked brow, his dust-gray cheekbones, his slender Gavroche had recognized him by his long, open nose, and his gray hair, which stood straight up in disorder. "Hey!" he said, "it's my old man! . . . Oh! It doesn't matter." He immediately bit the rope and climbed up hard. He reached the broken roof, straddled the head of the dangerous wall like a horse, and tied the rope firmly to the horizontal bar on the head of the window. It was not long before Thenardier was in the street. As soon as he stepped into the middle of the street and felt that he was out of danger, he no longer felt tired, numb, and trembling. With a ferocious and rare character, I feel that I can stand firm, be independent, and move forward.The first words the man uttered were: "Now, who are we going to eat?" There is no need to explain this transparent and terrifying word. It means killing, murdering, and robbing. The real meaning of "eat" is "swallow". "Come together," said Brujon, "we'll talk in a few words, and then we'll part immediately. There's a business in the Rue Plumet, and it seems to be a bit of a deal. It's a deserted street. A lonely house with an old rotten iron gate facing the garden, two lonely women." "Well! why don't you come?" asked Thenardier. "Your daughter, Eponine, has been there," replied Barbour. "She gave Manon a biscuit," Haizui continued, "it didn't make sense." "The girl is not stupid," said Thenardier, "but she must go and see." "Yes, yes," said Brujon, "you must go and see." At this moment, none of the people seemed to be paying attention to Gavroche. Gavroche sat on a stone supporting the fence and watched their conversation. He waited for a while, perhaps waiting for his father to turn to him. , then he put on his shoes again and said: "Is it over? I don't need me anymore, you people? I'm going. I've got to get my two boys up." After speaking, he left. The five men, one after the other, also walked out of the wooden fence. When Gavroche turned into the Rue des Ballets and disappeared, Barbour took Thenardier aside and asked him: "Have you noticed that child?" "Which child?" "Climb up the wall and bring the rope to your boy." "I didn't pay much attention." "Well, I don't know, I think it's your son." "Never mind!" said Thenardier, "probably not." He also walked away.