Page 1632 - les-miserables

a stone ceiling, and are called chambers of punishment. A
little light penetrates towards mid-day. The inconvenient
point about these chambers which, as the reader sees, are
not dungeons, is that they allow the persons who should be
at work to think.
So Brujon meditated, and he emerged from the chamber
of punishment with a rope. As he had the name of being
very dangerous in the Charlemagne courtyard, he was
placed in the New Building. The first thing he found in the
New Building was Guelemer, the second was a nail; Guele-
mer, that is to say, crime; a nail, that is to say, liberty. Brujon,
of whom it is high time that the reader should have a com-
plete idea, was, with an appearance of delicate health and
a profoundly premeditated languor, a polished, intelligent
sprig, and a thief, who had a caressing glance, and an atro-
cious smile. His glance resulted from his will, and his smile
from his nature. His first studies in his art had been direct-
ed to roofs. He had made great progress in the industry of
the men who tear off lead, who plunder the roofs and de-
spoil the gutters by the process called double pickings.
The circumstance which put the finishing touch on the
moment peculiarly favorable for an attempt at escape, was
that the roofers were re-laying and re-jointing, at that very
moment, a portion of the slates on the prison. The Saint-
Bernard courtyard was no longer absolutely isolated from
the Charlemagne and the Saint-Louis courts. Up above
there were scaffoldings and ladders; in other words, bridges
and stairs in the direction of liberty.
The New Building, which was the most cracked and de-

1632 Les Miserables