"How should I know?"
"Listen."
"Well, what?"
"There"s one thing you ought to do."
"What"s that?"
"Get off of our trap and spin that wedding."
"What for?"
"To find out where it goes, and what it is. Hurry up and jump down, trot, my girl, your legs are young."
"I can"t quit the vehicle."
"Why not?"
"I"m hired."
"Ah, the devil!"
"I owe my fishwife day to the prefecture."
"That"s true."
"If I leave the cart, the first inspector who gets his eye on me will arrest me. You know that well enough."
"Yes, I do."
"I"m bought by the government for to-day."
"All the same, that old fellow bothers me."
"Do the old fellows bother you? But you"re not a young girl."
"He"s in the first carriage."
"Well?"
"In the bride"s trap."
"What then?"
"So he is the father."
"What concern is that of mine?"
"I tell you that he"s the father."
"As if he were the only father."
"Listen."
"What?"
"I can"t go out otherwise than masked. Here I"m concealed, no one knows that I"m here. But to-morrow, there will be no more maskers. It"s Ash Wednesday. I run the risk of being nabbed. I must sneak back into my hole. But you are free."
"Not particularly."
"More than I am, at any rate."
"Well, what of that?"
"You must try to find out where that wedding-party went to."
"Where it went?"
"Yes."
"I know."
"Where is it going then?"
"To the Cadran-Bleu."
"In the first place, it"s not in that direction."
"Well! to la Rapee."
"Or elsewhere."
"It"s free. Wedding-parties are at liberty."
"That"s not the point at all. I tell you that you must try to learn for me what that wedding is, who that old cove belongs to, and where that wedding pair lives."
"I like that! that would be queer. It"s so easy to find out a wedding-party that pa.s.sed through the street on a Shrove Tuesday, a week afterwards. A pin in a hay-mow! It ain"t possible!"
"That don"t matter. You must try. You understand me, Azelma."
The two files resumed their movement on both sides of the boulevard, in opposite directions, and the carriage of the maskers lost sight of the "trap" of the bride.
CHAPTER II--JEAN VALJEAN STILL WEARS HIS ARM IN A SLING
To realize one"s dream. To whom is this accorded? There must be elections for this in heaven; we are all candidates, unknown to ourselves; the angels vote. Cosette and Marius had been elected.