Page 1338 - les-miserables

larly venerable.
He laid four louis on the table.
‘Monsieur Fabantou,’ said he, ‘this is for your rent and
your most pressing necessities. We will attend to the rest
hereafter.’
‘May God requite it to you, my generous benefactor!’ said
Jondrette.
And rapidly approaching his wife:—
‘Dismiss the carriage!’
She slipped out while her husband was lavishing sa-
lutes and offering M. Leblanc a chair. An instant later she
returned and whispered in his ear:—
‘‘Tis done.’
The snow, which had not ceased falling since the morn-
ing, was so deep that the arrival of the fiacre had not been
audible, and they did not now hear its departure.
Meanwhile, M. Leblanc had seated himself.
Jondrette had taken possession of the other chair, facing
M. Leblanc.
Now, in order to form an idea of the scene which is to fol-
low, let the reader picture to himself in his own mind, a cold
night, the solitudes of the Salpetriere covered with snow
and white as winding-sheets in the moonlight, the taper-
like lights of the street lanterns which shone redly here and
there along those tragic boulevards, and the long rows of
black elms, not a passer-by for perhaps a quarter of a league
around, the Gorbeau hovel, at its highest pitch of silence,
of horror, and of darkness; in that building, in the midst of
those solitudes, in the midst of that darkness, the vast Jon-

1338 Les Miserables