Page 2425 - les-miserables

Marius abruptly drew his chair closer to that of Thenar-
dier. Thenardier noticed this movement and continued with
the deliberation of an orator who holds his interlocutor and
who feels his adversary palpitating under his words:
‘This man, forced to conceal himself, and for reasons,
moreover, which are foreign to politics, had adopted the
sewer as his domicile and had a key to it. It was, I repeat, on
the 6th of June; it might have been eight o’clock in the eve-
ning. The man hears a noise in the sewer. Greatly surprised,
he hides himself and lies in wait. It was the sound of foot-
steps, some one was walking in the dark, and coming in his
direction. Strange to say, there was another man in the sew-
er besides himself. The grating of the outlet from the sewer
was not far off. A little light which fell through it permitted
him to recognize the newcomer, and to see that the man was
carrying something on his back. He was walking in a bent
attitude. The man who was walking in a bent attitude was
an ex-convict, and what he was dragging on his shoulders
was a corpse. Assassination caught in the very act, if ever
there was such a thing. As for the theft, that is understood;
one does not kill a man gratis. This convict was on his way
to fling the body into the river. One fact is to be noticed,
that before reaching the exit grating, this convict, who had
come a long distance in the sewer, must, necessarily, have
encountered a frightful quagmire where it seems as though
he might have left the body, but the sewermen would have
found the assassinated man the very next day, while at work
on the quagmire, and that did not suit the assassin’s plans.
He had preferred to traverse that quagmire with his burden,

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