Page 417 - les-miserables

‘To-morrow will be too late.’
‘The deuce!’
‘Is there not a mail-wagon which runs to Arras? When
will it pass?’
‘To-night. Both the posts pass at night; the one going as
well as the one coming.’
‘What! It will take you a day to mend this wheel?’
‘A day, and a good long one.’
‘If you set two men to work?’
‘If I set ten men to work.’
‘What if the spokes were to be tied together with ropes?’
‘That could be done with the spokes, not with the hub;
and the felly is in a bad state, too.’
‘Is there any one in this village who lets out teams?’
‘No.’
‘Is there another wheelwright?’
The stableman and the wheelwright replied in concert,
with a toss of the head
‘No.’
He felt an immense joy.
It was evident that Providence was intervening. That it
was it who had broken the wheel of the tilbury and who
was stopping him on the road. He had not yielded to this
sort of first summons; he had just made every possible effort
to continue the journey; he had loyally and scrupulously
exhausted all means; he had been deterred neither by the
season, nor fatigue, nor by the expense; he had nothing with
which to reproach himself. If he went no further, that was
no fault of his. It did not concern him further. It was no lon-

417