Page 1709 - les-miserables

for the others; a second later, all six were reunited.
These men began to talk in a low voice.
‘This is the place,’ said one of them.
‘Is there a cab [dog] in the garden?’ asked another.
‘I don’t know. In any case, I have fetched a ball that we’ll
make him eat.’
‘Have you some putty to break the pane with?’
‘Yes.’
‘The railing is old,’ interpolated a fifth, who had the voice
of a ventriloquist.
‘So much the better,’ said the second who had spoken. ‘It
won’t screech under the saw, and it won’t be hard to cut.’
The sixth, who had not yet opened his lips, now began to
inspect the gate, as Eponine had done an hour earlier, grasp-
ing each bar in succession, and shaking them cautiously.
Thus he came to the bar which Marius had loosened. As
he was on the point of grasping this bar, a hand emerged
abruptly from the darkness, fell upon his arm; he felt him-
self vigorously thrust aside by a push in the middle of his
breast, and a hoarse voice said to him, but not loudly:—
‘There’s a dog.’
At the same moment, he perceived a pale girl standing
before him.
The man underwent that shock which the unexpected al-
ways brings. He bristled up in hideous wise; nothing is so
formidable to behold as ferocious beasts who are uneasy;
their terrified air evokes terror.
He recoiled and stammered:—
‘What jade is this?’

1709