Page 1295 - les-miserables

position that they work by night.
These two men, standing there motionless and in conver-
sation, in the snow which was falling in whirlwinds, formed
a group that a policeman would surely have observed, but
which Marius hardly noticed.
Still, in spite of his mournful preoccupation, he could
not refrain from saying to himself that this prowler of the
barriers with whom Jondrette was talking resembled a cer-
tain Panchaud, alias Printanier, alias Bigrenaille, whom
Courfeyrac had once pointed out to him as a very dan-
gerous nocturnal roamer. This man’s name the reader has
learned in the preceding book. This Panchaud, alias Print-
anier, alias Bigrenaille, figured later on in many criminal
trials, and became a notorious rascal. He was at that time
only a famous rascal. To-day he exists in the state of tradi-
tion among ruffians and assassins. He was at the head of a
school towards the end of the last reign. And in the evening,
at nightfall, at the hour when groups form and talk in whis-
pers, he was discussed at La Force in the Fosse-aux-Lions.
One might even, in that prison, precisely at the spot where
the sewer which served the unprecedented escape, in broad
daylight, of thirty prisoners, in 1843, passes under the cul-
vert, read his name, PANCHAUD, audaciously carved by
his own hand on the wall of the sewer, during one of his at-
tempts at flight. In 1832, the police already had their eye on
him, but he had not as yet made a serious beginning.

1295