Page 1635 - les-miserables

jailers, half-thieves, who assist in escapes, who sell to the
police an unfaithful service, and who turn a penny when-
ever they can.
On that same night, then, when Little Gavroche picked
up the two lost children, Brujon and Guelemer, who knew
that Babet, who had escaped that morning, was waiting for
them in the street as well as Montparnasse, rose softly, and
with the nail which Brujon had found, began to pierce the
chimney against which their beds stood. The rubbish fell on
Brujon’s bed, so that they were not heard. Showers mingled
with thunder shook the doors on their hinges, and cre-
ated in the prison a terrible and opportune uproar. Those
of the prisoners who woke, pretended to fall asleep again,
and left Guelemer and Brujon to their own devices. Bru-
jon was adroit; Guelemer was vigorous. Before any sound
had reached the watcher, who was sleeping in the grated
cell which opened into the dormitory, the wall had, been
pierced, the chimney scaled, the iron grating which barred
the upper orifice of the flue forced, and the two redoubtable
ruffians were on the roof. The wind and rain redoubled, the
roof was slippery.
‘What a good night to leg it!’ said Brujon.
An abyss six feet broad and eighty feet deep separated
them from the surrounding wall. At the bottom of this abyss,
they could see the musket of a sentinel gleaming through
the gloom. They fastened one end of the rope which Bru-
jon had spun in his dungeon to the stumps of the iron bars
which they had just wrenched off, flung the other over the
outer wall, crossed the abyss at one bound, clung to the cop-

1635