A few minutes only separated Jean Valjean from that terrible precipice which yawned before him for the third time.
And the galleys now meant not only the galleys, but Cosette lost to him forever; that is to say, a life resembling the interior of a tomb.
There was but one thing which was possible.
Jean Valjean had this peculiarity, that he carried, as one might say, two beggar's pouches:
in one he kept his saintly thoughts; in the other the redoubtable talents of a convict.
He rummaged in the one or the other, according to circumstances.
Among his other resources, thanks to his numerous escapes from the prison at Toulon, he was, as it will be remembered, 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; an art which has rendered so celebrated and so alarming that corner of the wall of the Conciergerie of Paris by which Battemolle, condemned to death, made his escape twenty years ago.
Jean Valjean measured with his eyes the wall above which he espied the linden; it was about eighteen feet in height.
The angle which it formed with the gable of the large building was filled, at its lower extremity, by a mass of masonry of a triangular shape, probably intended to preserve that too convenient corner from the rubbish of those dirty creatures called the passers-by. This practice of filling up corners of the wall is much in use in Paris.
This mass was about five feet in height; the space above the summit of this mass which it was necessary to climb was not more than fourteen feet.
The wall was surmounted by a flat stone without a coping.
Cosette was the difficulty, for she did not know how to climb a wall. Should he abandon her?
Jean Valjean did not once think of that. It was impossible to carry her.
A man's whole strength is required to successfully 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 had 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 fell on the street lantern-post of the blind alley Genrot.