Babet pressed a knife into Montparnasse's hand. The thief nodded and slipped it into his pocket, understanding that, even with his mask in place, the police may spot him. He had hardly been free for a fortnight.
The entire Patron-Minette was preparing for the Mardi Gras festivities, tossing stories back and forth and laughing raucously at the obvious stupidity of the upper classes. Even Montparnasse could not swallow back a grin when Gueulemer told of a well-dressed man who had taken one glance at him and thrown his purse into the air, making an escape so hastily that he had passed several carriages on foot. Gueulemer, it seemed, had only been returning the man an embroidered handkerchief that had fallen from his pocket. "They won't let us do them good!" he concluded, shouting over the voices of all the others. "It only seemed fitting I kept it all!"
Montparnasse was squeezing past Thénardier, to whom he had not yet spoken, in an attempt to reach his battered old hat. The other man's suit crinkled at the contact, and Montparnasse could not stop himself raising an eyebrow.
Grinning, the old innkeeper reached into the pocket of his jacket and drew forth a handful of newspaper cuttings. "The only safe place where I trust they won't come to harm," he explained, patting his pocket. "These are important. You never know when you'll need backup, eh? And look at this!" He waved one of the fresher ones under Montparnasse's nose. "This article was a relief to all of us, huh?"
"Why don't you put the damn newspaper away?" Brujon cut in. "We've all seen those stupid things hundreds of times. Yes, Inspector Javert is gone, but they replaced him soon enough, didn't they?"
"Javert?" Montparnasse repeated.
"I saw him on that very day, didn't I?" proclaimed a gleeful Thénardier. "He was following me into the sewers, and I saw that rascal from Montfermeil with a corpse! And I said—"
"'I have the key! I'll trade you for it!'" Babet interrupted. He continued Thénardier's story, accompanied by an exaggerated pantomime that he had obviously seen enacted many times. "And then, when the man wasn't looking, you ripped a piece of cloth from the suit to use as evidence—which you still carry with you. And then you opened the grate and let the man pass!"
"But that's not all!" Thénardier cried indignantly. "I haven't told you the rest of the story!"
"The part where you watched Javert confront the man, and the two of them left carrying the muddy corpse?"
"Well—"
Montparnasse cut him off. "Where did you see the inspector?"
"At the Seine," Thénardier said. "I can't imagine how he found our new place before we'd properly moved in, but I always figure he got some tip-off. Lucky for us the girl had oiled the hinges and passed me the key."
Montparnasse closed his eyes, suddenly realising how Javert had found them.
"I've got a place on a cart in the parade!" Thénardier announced, and he let himself out through the grate.
Babet smirked and rolled his eyes after him. "Oh, and I've something else for you, lad!" he said, reaching into his valise. He extracted a handsome black glove nearly as long as the dainty things he had seen rich women wearing as they climbed into their fine carriages. A silver buckle at the cuff would secure it halfway to the elbow. "I've stuffed it with old newspapers—none of the innkeeper's precious documents, of course."
Understanding the glove's purpose, Montparnasse clumsily fastened it over his crippled arm. The newspaper filled out the otherwise empty palm and fingers, creating an illusion of the hand that Montparnasse had lost. Unsure of the words, Montparnasse simply nodded his gratitude.
Babet understood.
"That's a wedding there," Brujon said suddenly. "What a day to be married!"
Montparnasse squinted at the carriages that crept toward him on their side of the parade. There was the small wedding procession, caught in the midst of the drunkards and the tramps that were cavorting about on and off of the other vehicles. Mildly curious as to what kind of person would be married on Mardi Gras, Montparnasse pushed closer to the front of the crowd.
He smiled tightly at several masked men who staggered past, costumed women leading them by the hand. Babet joined him a moment later.
As the wedding carriages rolled past, Montparnasse rocked forward onto his toes, stretching his neck to see inside. The first carriage passed him, and he adjusted his position so that he would certainly see the passengers in the next.
He needn't have bothered. The young groom in the second carriage was leaning forward, his cheeks red with a mixture of excitement and humility. Montparnasse's stomach twisted into a burning knot. He had not forgotten the curling dark hair and the handsome face of this lovesick young baron—the baron he had believed dead since the June revolution.
Pushing Babet away, he began to follow the carriage, slipping back into the crowd so that none inside would notice him.
Montparnasse had, of course, gone to the Rue Plumet since his escape, but the girl in the garden was gone and the house was empty. Assuming that the baron had died along with his friends, Montparnasse had maintained a level of peace with the knowledge that neither of them would be happy. Yet here he was, alive and, as of today, married--perhaps to the girl that Montparnasse had known.
To continue in this strain, several other problems must be immediately addressed. What, the reader is certainly wondering, of Éponine? Had he simply forgotten her?
Of course Montparnasse had not entirely forgotten her, and nothing about it could have been called simple. He had first allowed her name to fall into disuse in his consciousness, thinking of her as nothing more than the Thénardier girl. He allowed the details of her appearance to blur in his memory, and after a month or so of prison he was merely suppressing the awareness that there had been a girl who had mattered. The little things that reminded him of her slowly lost their meaning, and he continued on as a ship whose captain ignores the hole in its underbelly and tries to forget that it is sinking. He never looked at his scarred palm.
The unexpected appearance of the baron in his life had jerked at these abandoned memories forward, though he could still attempt to hold them back. The dull burn in his stomach and the subtle aching feeling had suddenly returned, bringing with them the Thénardier girl. He would not allow his mind to form her name. Montparnasse's sudden fascination with the baron was born more of surprise than his carefully ignored past.
The wedding procession separated from the parade at last and turned onto the Rue des Filles-du-Calvaire. He tried to move through the throng of masked Parisians, but a small fight to his left had erupted into a brawl, and Montparnasse could see several of the police pushing their way toward the fray. He ducked through the crowd and hurried into an alley, eventually making his way back to the deserted grate, where he waited until the others staggered in.