Page 775 - les-miserables

CHAPTER V

WHICH WOULD BE

IMPOSSIBLE WITH

GAS LANTERNS

At that moment a heavy and measured sound began to be
audible at some distance. Jean Valjean risked a glance round
the corner of the street. Seven or eight soldiers, drawn up in
a platoon, had just debouched into the Rue Polonceau. He
saw the gleam of their bayonets. They were advancing to-
wards him; these soldiers, at whose head he distinguished
Javert’s tall figure, advanced slowly and cautiously. They
halted frequently; it was plain that they were searching all
the nooks of the walls and all the embrasures of the doors
and alleys.
This was some patrol that Javert had encountered—there
could be no mistake as to this surmise—and whose aid he
had demanded.
Javert’s two acolytes were marching in their ranks.
At the rate at which they were marching, and in consid-
eration of the halts which they were making, it would take

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