When you turn out of the Rue des Ballets into the Rue du Roi de Sicile, you notice almost directly on your right a dirty hollow. In the last century a house stood here, of which only the back wall exists, a perfect ruin of a wall which rises to the height of a third story between the adjacent buildings. This ruin can be recognized by two large square windows, still visible. The centre one, the one nearest the right-hand gable, is barred by a worm-eaten joist adjusted in the supporting rafter; and through these windows could be seen, formerly, a lofty lugubrious wall, which was a portion of the outer wall of La Force. The gap which the demolished house has left in the street is half filled up with a palisade of rotten planks, supported by five stone pillars, and inside is a small hut built against the still standing ruin. The boarding has a door in it which a few years ago was merely closed with a latch. It was the top of this ruin which Thénardier had attained a little after three in the morning. How did he get there? This was never explained or understood. The lightning-flashes must at once have impeded and helped him. Did he employ the ladders and scaffolding of the slaters to pass from roof to roof, over the buildings of the Charlemagne yard, those of the St. Louis yard, the outer, and thence reach the ruined wall in the Rue du Roi de Sicile? But there were in this passage breaks of continuity, which seemed to render it impossible. Had he laid the plank from his bed as a bridge from the roof of Bel Air to the outer wall, and crawled on his stomach along the coping, all round the prison till he reached the ruin? But the outer wall of La Force was very irregular; it rose and sank; it was low at the fire-brigade station, and rose again at the bath-house; it was intersected by buildings, and had everywhere drops and right angles; and then, too, the sentries must have seen the fugitive's dark outline,--and thus the road taken by Thénardier remains almost inexplicable. Had he, illumined by that frightful thirst for liberty which changes precipices into ditches, iron bars into reeds, a cripple into an athlete, a gouty patient into a bird, stupidity into instinct, instinct into intellect, and intellect into genius, invented and improvised a third mode of escape? No one ever knew.