At that moment a heavy and measured sound begins to be audible at some distance. Jean Valjean risks a glance round the corner of the street. Seven or eight soldiers, drawn up in a platoon, have just debouched into the Rue Polonceau. He sees the gleam of their bayonets. They are advancing towards him. These soldiers, at whose head he distinguishes Javert's tall figure, advance slowly and cautiously. They halt frequently. It is plain that they are searching all the nooks of the walls and all the embrasures of the doors and alleys. This is some patrol that Javert has encountered, and whose aid he has demanded. Javert's two acolytes are marching in their ranks. At the rate at which they are marching, and in consideration of the halts they are making, it will take them about a quarter of an hour to reach the spot where Jean Valjean stands. It is a frightful moment. A few minutes only separate him from that terrible precipice which yawns before him for the third time. And the galleys now mean not only the galleys, but Cosette lost to him forever: that is to say, a life resembling the interior of a tomb. There is but one thing which is possible. Jean Valjean has this peculiarity, that he carries, as one might say, two beggar's pouches: in one he keeps his saintly thoughts; in the other the redoubtable talents of a convict. He rummages in the one or the other, according to circumstances. Among his other resources, thanks to his numerous escapes from the prison at Toulon, he is a past master in the incredible art of crawling up without ladder or climbing-irons, by sheer muscular force, by leaning on the nape of his neck, his shoulders, his hips, and his knees, by helping himself on the rare projections of the stone, in the right angle of a wall, as high as the sixth story, if need be.
He measures with his eyes the wall above which he espies the linden. It is about eighteen feet in height. The angle which it forms with the gable of the large building is filled, at its lower extremity, by a mass of masonry of a triangular shape. This mass is about five feet in height. The space above the summit of this mass which it is necessary to climb is not more than fourteen feet. The wall is surmounted by a flat stone without a coping. Cosette is the difficulty, for she does not know how to climb a wall. Should he abandon her? Jean Valjean does not once think of that. It is impossible to carry her. A man's whole strength is required to carry out these singular ascents. The least burden would disturb his centre of gravity and pull him downwards. A rope would have been required. Jean Valjean has none. Where was he to get a rope at midnight, in the Rue Polonceau? Certainly, if Jean Valjean had had a kingdom, he would have given it for a rope at that moment. All extreme situations have their lightning flashes which sometimes dazzle, sometimes illuminate us. Jean Valjean's despairing glance falls on the street lantern-post of the blind alley Genrot. At that epoch there were no gas-jets in the streets of Paris. At nightfall lanterns placed at regular distances were lighted. They were ascended and descended by means of a rope, which traversed the street from side to side, and was adjusted in a groove of the post. Jean Valjean, with the energy of a supreme struggle, crosses the street at one bound, enters the blind alley, breaks the latch of the little box with the point of his knife, and an instant later he is beside Cosette once more. He had a rope. These gloomy inventors of expedients work rapidly when they are fighting against fatality. The lanterns have not been lighted that night. The lantern in the Cul-de-Sac Genrot is thus naturally extinct, like the rest, and one could pass directly under it without even noticing that it was no longer in its place.
Nevertheless, the hour, the place, the darkness, Jean Valjean's absorption, his singular gestures, his goings and comings, all have begun to render Cosette uneasy. Any other child than she would have given vent to loud shrieks long before. She contents herself with plucking Jean Valjean by the skirt of his coat. They can hear the sound of the patrol's approach ever more and more distinctly. Father, said she, in a very low voice, I am afraid. Who is coming yonder? Hush, replied the unhappy man. It is Madame Thenardier. Cosette shuddered. He added, Say nothing. Don't interfere with me. If you cry out, if you weep, the Thenardier is lying in wait for you. She is coming to take you back. Then, without haste, but without making a useless movement, with firm and curt precision, the more remarkable at a moment when the patrol and Javert might come upon him at any moment, he undoes his cravat, passes it round Cosette's body under the armpits, taking care that it should not hurt the child, fastens this cravat to one end of the rope by means of that knot which seafaring men call a swallow knot, takes the other end of the rope in his teeth, pulls off his shoes and stockings, which he throws over the wall, steps upon the mass of masonry, and begins to raise himself in the angle of the wall and the gable with as much solidity and certainty as though he had the rounds of a ladder under his feet and elbows. Half a minute has not elapsed when he is resting on his knees on the wall. Cosette gazes at him in stupid amazement, without uttering a word. Jean Valjean's injunction, and the name of Madame Thenardier, have chilled her blood. All at once she hears Jean Valjean's voice crying to her, though in a very low tone, Put your back against the wall. She obeys. Don't say a word, and don't be alarmed. And she felt herself lifted from the ground. Before she had time to recover herself, she was on the top of the wall. Jean Valjean grasped her, put her on his back, took her two tiny hands in his large left hand, lay down flat on his stomach and crawled along on top of the wall as far as the cant. As he had guessed, there stood a building whose roof started from the top of the wooden barricade and descended to within a very short distance of the ground, with a gentle slope which grazed the linden-tree. He has just reached the slope of the roof, and has not yet left the crest of the wall, when a violent uproar announces the arrival of the patrol. The thundering voice of Javert is audible. Search the blind alley. The Rue Droit-Mur is guarded. So is the Rue Petit-Picpus. I'll answer for it that he is in the blind alley. The soldiers rushed into the Genrot alley. Jean Valjean allowed himself to slide down the roof, still holding fast to Cosette, reached the linden-tree, and leaped to the ground. Whether from terror or courage, Cosette had not breathed a sound, though her hands were a little abraded.
