In Which the Tree with the Zinc Plaster Appears Again — Les Misérables

Some time after these events, Boulatruelle experienced a lively emotion. He was that road-mender of Montfermeil, a man who broke stones and damaged travellers on the highway. He cherished one dream: treasures buried in the forest, money in the earth at the foot of a tree. He had just escaped neatly. Picked up in Jondrette's garret with the other ruffians, his drunkenness had been his salvation. An order that declined to prosecute, founded on his well authenticated state of intoxication, had set him at liberty. He had returned to his road, to make broken stone for the good of the state, his ardor for theft somewhat cooled, but still tenderly addicted to the wine which had recently saved him.

One morning, a little before daybreak, he caught sight through the branches of a man whose back alone he saw, but whose shoulders, at that distance and in the early dusk, were not entirely unfamiliar. The man did not belong in the country-side. He had just arrived, on foot, with neither haversack nor bundle. From Paris, no doubt. Why was he in these woods at such an hour. Boulatruelle thought of the treasure. He recalled, in a vague way, that many years before he had had a similar alarm in connection with a man who might well be this very individual. He would find him again. This prowler had a reason, and he would know it. People cannot have secrets in his forest if he does not have a finger in the pie. He took his pick-axe, very sharply pointed, and set out across the thickets.

Daybreak came to his assistance. Footprints, trodden weeds, heather crushed, young branches straightening themselves, pointed out a track. He followed it, then lost it. An early huntsman suggested the idea of climbing a tree. He ascended a great beech as high as he was able. On scrutinising the solitary waste, he suddenly caught sight of his man, and hardly had he got his eye upon him when he lost sight of him. The man glided into an open glade, masked by large trees, which Boulatruelle knew because of an ailing chestnut-tree bandaged with a sheet of zinc nailed directly upon the bark. With the rapidity of joy he dropped from the tree. The lair was unearthed. That famous treasure of his dreams was probably there. He believed in the straight line, a respectable optical illusion which ruins many a man, and flung himself into the tangle. He was much lacerated. At the bottom of the ravine he found water which he was obliged to traverse. After forty minutes he reached the glade, sweating, soaked, breathless, scratched, and ferocious. There was no one there. The heap of stones had not been carried off. The man had vanished. And, heartrending to say, there, behind the pile of stones, in front of the tree with the sheet of zinc, was freshly turned earth, a pick-axe abandoned, and a hole. The hole was empty. Thief, shrieked Boulatruelle, shaking his fist at the horizon.