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He now rejoiced to take me to the sawpit, to allow me to play about the timber-yards, and share with him his alfresco midday meal and pot of porter. I always passed for his eldest son, my name being told to the neighbours as Ralph Rattlin Brandon. I knew no otherwise, and my foster-parents kept the secret religiously.
Then all is said, the tempest is loosed, stones rain down, a fusillade breaks forth, many precipitate themselves to the bottom of the bank, and pass the small arm of the Seine, now filled in, the timber-yards of the Isle Louviers, that vast citadel ready to hand, bristle with combatants, stakes are torn up, pistol-shots fired, a barricade begun, the young men who are thrust back pass the Austerlitz bridge with the hearse at a run, and the municipal guard, the carabineers rush up, the dragoons ply their swords, the crowd disperses in all directions, a rumor of war flies to all four quarters of Paris, men shout: "To arms!" they run, tumble down, flee, resist.
A little street, the Rue du Chemin-Vert-Saint-Antoine, opened out between two timber-yards enclosed in walls. This street was dark and narrow and seemed made expressly for him. Before entering it he cast a glance behind him. From the point where he stood he could see the whole extent of the Pont d'Austerlitz. Four shadows were just entering on the bridge.
A heavy cart was crossing the Seine at the same time as himself, and on its way, like him, to the right bank. This was of use to him. He could traverse the bridge in the shadow of the cart. Towards the middle of the Bridge, Cosette, whose feet were benumbed, wanted to walk. He set her on the ground and took her hand again. The bridge once crossed, he perceived some timber-yards on his right.
Jean Valjean recoiled. The point of Paris where Jean Valjean found himself, situated between the Faubourg Saint-Antoine and la Rapee, is one of those which recent improvements have transformed from top to bottom, resulting in disfigurement according to some, and in a transfiguration according to others. The market-gardens, the timber-yards, and the old buildings have been effaced.
And everything outside was new; a large working-men's district had sprung up where there had once been timber-yards or water. Below him engines were drawing rows of trucks filled with ballast across the site for the new goods-station yard; and on the opposite side of the harbor a new residential and business quarter had grown up on the Iceland Quay.
She's one of those poor creatures who have no other home than the big timber-yards, and there she's made a living by going from one to another of the bigger lads. I can get nothing out of her, but I've found out in other ways that she's lived among timber-stacks and in cellars for at least two years.
For all round this beautiful Establishment, or Oasis of Purity, intended for the Devil's regiments of the line, lay continents of dingy poor and dirty dwellings, where the unfortunate not yet enlisted into that Force were struggling manifoldly, in their workshops, in their marble-yards and timber-yards and tan-yards, in their close cellars, cobbler-stalls, hungry garrets, and poor dark trade-shops with red-herrings and tobacco-pipes crossed in the window, to keep the Devil out-of-doors, and not enlist with him.
Starting from the Place Drouaise, he came to a little bridge where the waters meet of the two branches of the Eure; to the right, above the eddying current and the buildings on the shore, he could see the pile of the old town shouldering up the cathedral; to the left, all along the quay, and looking out on the tall poplars that fanned the water-mills, were saw-mills and timber-yards, the washing places where laundresses knelt on straw in troughs, and the water foamed before them in widening inky circles splashed into white bubbles by the dip of a bird's wing.
"Are you sure of what you assert?" "What do you mean by that question?" "Understand, sir, I do not in the least suspect your veracity; I ask if you are certain of it?" "I knew his father, M. Zaccone." "Ah, indeed?" "And when a child I often played with the son in the timber-yards." "But whence does he derive the title of count?" "You are aware that may be bought." "In Italy?" "Everywhere."
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