Page 2236 - les-miserables

up in Jondrette’s garret in company with the other ruffians.
Utility of a vice: his drunkenness had been his salvation.
The authorities had never been able to make out whether
he had been there in the quality of a robber or a man who
had been robbed. An order of nolle prosequi, founded on
his well authenticated state of intoxication on the evening
of the ambush, had set him at liberty. He had taken to his
heels. He had returned to his road from Gagny to Lagny, to
make, under administrative supervision, broken stone for
the good of the state, with downcast mien, in a very pensive
mood, his ardor for theft somewhat cooled; but he was ad-
dicted none the less tenderly to the wine which had recently
saved him.
As for the lively emotion which he had experienced
a short time after his return to his road-mender’s turf-
thatched cot, here it is:
One morning, Boulatruelle, while on his way as was his
wont, to his work, and possibly also to his ambush, a lit-
tle before daybreak caught sight, through the branches of
the trees, of a man, whose back alone he saw, but the shape
of whose shoulders, as it seemed to him at that distance
and in the early dusk, was not entirely unfamiliar to him.
Boulatruelle, although intoxicated, had a correct and lucid
memory, a defensive arm that is indispensable to any one
who is at all in conflict with legal order.
‘Where the deuce have I seen something like that man
yonder?’ he said to himself. But he could make himself no
answer, except that the man resembled some one of whom
his memory preserved a confused trace.

2236 Les Miserables