Thénardier saw something resembling a gleam of hope flash before his eyes—these men conversed in slang.
The first said in a low but distinct voice:—
“Let’s cut. What are we up to here?”
The second replied: “It’s raining hard enough to put out the very devil’s fire. And the bobbies will be along instanter. There’s a soldier on guard yonder. We shall get nabbed here.”
These two words, icigo and icicaille , both of which mean ici , and which belong, the first to the slang of the barriers, the second to the slang of the Temple, were flashes of light for Thénardier. By the icigo he recognized Brujon, who was a prowler of the barriers, by the icicaille he knew Babet, who, among his other trades, had been an old-clothes broker at the Temple.
The antique slang of the great century is no longer spoken except in the Temple, and Babet was really the only person who spoke it in all its purity. Had it not been for the icicaille , Thénardier would not have recognized him, for he had entirely changed his voice.
In the meanwhile, the third man had intervened.
“There’s no hurry yet, let’s wait a bit. How do we know that he doesn’t stand in need of us?”
By this, which was nothing but French, Thénardier recognized Montparnasse, who made it a point in his elegance to understand all slangs and to speak none of them.