Page 1637 - les-miserables

in front of his cage with loaded musket. The Fine-Air was
lighted by a skylight. The prisoner had on his feet fetters
weighing fifty pounds. Every day, at four o’clock in the after-
noon, a jailer, escorted by two dogs,—this was still in vogue
at that time,—entered his cage, deposited beside his bed a
loaf of black bread weighing two pounds, a jug of water, a
bowl filled with rather thin bouillon, in which swam a few
Mayagan beans, inspected his irons and tapped the bars.
This man and his dogs made two visits during the night.
Thenardier had obtained permission to keep a sort of
iron bolt which he used to spike his bread into a crack in
the wall, ‘in order to preserve it from the rats,’ as he said. As
Thenardier was kept in sight, no objection had been made to
this spike. Still, it was remembered afterwards, that one of
the jailers had said: ‘It would be better to let him have only
a wooden spike.’
At two o’clock in the morning, the sentinel, who was an
old soldier, was relieved, and replaced by a conscript. A few
moments later, the man with the dogs paid his visit, and
went off without noticing anything, except, possibly, the ex-
cessive youth and ‘the rustic air’ of the ‘raw recruit.’ Two
hours afterwards, at four o’clock, when they came to relieve
the conscript, he was found asleep on the floor, lying like
a log near Thenardier’s cage. As for Thenardier, he was no
longer there. There was a hole in the ceiling of his cage, and,
above it, another hole in the roof. One of the planks of his
bed had been wrenched off, and probably carried away with
him, as it was not found. They also seized in his cell a half-
empty bottle which contained the remains of the stupefying

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