Page 1708 - les-miserables

She approached the railing, felt of the bars one after the
other, and readily recognized the one which Marius had
moved.
She murmured in a low voice and in gloomy accents:—
‘None of that, Lisette!’
She seated herself on the underpinning of the railing,
close beside the bar, as though she were guarding it. It was
precisely at the point where the railing touched the neigh-
boring wall. There was a dim nook there, in which Eponine
was entirely concealed.
She remained thus for more than an hour, without stir-
ring and without breathing, a prey to her thoughts.
Towards ten o’clock in the evening, one of the two or
three persons who passed through the Rue Plumet, an old,
belated bourgeois who was making haste to escape from
this deserted spot of evil repute, as he skirted the garden
railings and reached the angle which it made with the wall,
heard a dull and threatening voice saying:—
‘I’m no longer surprised that he comes here every eve-
ning.’
The passer-by cast a glance around him, saw no one,
dared not peer into the black niche, and was greatly alarmed.
He redoubled his pace.
This passer-by had reason to make haste, for a very few
instants later, six men, who were marching separately and
at some distance from each other, along the wall, and who
might have been taken for a gray patrol, entered the Rue
Plumet.
The first to arrive at the garden railing halted, and waited

1708 Les Miserables