Thénardier stopped, out of breath. His little narrow chest panted like a forge-bellows; his eye was full of the ignoble happiness of a weak, cruel, and cowardly creature who is at length able to trample on the man he feared, and insult him whom he flattered; it is the joy of a dwarf putting his heel on the head of Goliath, the joy of a jackal beginning to rend a sick bull so near death as to be unable to defend itself, but with enough vitality to still suffer. M. Leblanc did not interrupt him, but said, when he ceased speaking,—

"I do not know what you mean, and you are mistaken. I am a very poor man, and anything but a millionnaire. I do not know you, and you take me for somebody else."

"Ah!" Thénardier said hoarsely, "a fine dodge! So you adhere to that joke, eh, old fellow? Ah, you do not remember, you do not see who I am!"

"Pardon me, sir," M. Leblanc replied, with a polite accent, which had something strange and grand about it at such a moment, "I see that you are a bandit."

We may remind those who have not noticed the fact, that odious beings possess a susceptibility, and that monsters are ticklish. At the word "bandit," Mother Thénardier leaped from the bed, and her husband clutched a chair as if about to break it in his hand. "Don't stir, you!" he shouted to his wife, and then turning to M. Leblanc, said,—

"Bandit! yes, I know that you rich swells call us so. It is true that I have been bankrupt. I am in hiding, I have no bread, I have not a farthing, and I am a bandit! For three days I have eaten nothing, and I am a bandit! Ah, you fellows warm your toes, your wear pumps made by Sakoski, you have wadded coats like archbishops, you live on the first floors of houses where a porter is kept, you eat truffles, asparagus at forty francs the bundle in January, and green peas. You stuff yourselves, and when you want to know whether it is cold you look in the newspaper to see what Chevalier's thermometer marks; but we are the thermometers. We have no call to go and look at the corner of the Jour d'Horloge how many degrees of cold there are, for we feel the blood stopped in our veins, and the ice reach our hearts, and we say, 'There is no God!' and you come into our caverns,—yes, our caverns,—to call us bandits! But we will eat you, we will devour you, poor little chap! Monsieur le Millionnaire, learn this: I was an established man, I held a license, I was an elector, and am still a citizen, while you, perhaps, are not one!"

Here Thénardier advanced a step toward the men near the door, and added with a quiver,—

"When I think that he dares to come and address me like a cobbler!"

Then he turned upon M. Leblanc with a fresh outburst of frenzy,—

"And know this, too, my worthy philanthropist, I am not a doubtful man, or one whose name is unknown, and carries off children from houses! I am an ex-French soldier, and ought to have the cross! I was at Waterloo, and in the battle I saved the life of a General called the Comte de—I don't know what. He told me his name, but his dog of a voice was so feeble that I did not understand it. I only understood Merci. I should have liked his name better than his thanks. It would have helped me find him, by all that's great and glorious! The picture you see here, and which was painted by David at Bruqueselles, do you know whom it represents? It represents me, for David wished to immortalize the exploit. I have the General on my back, and I am carrying him through the grape-shot. That is the story! The General never did anything for me, and he is no better than the rest; but, for all that, I saved his life at the peril of my own, and I have my pockets filled with certificates of the fact. I am a soldier of Waterloo! And now that I have had the goodness to tell you all this, let us come to a finish; I want money, I want a deal of money, an enormous amount of money, or I shall exterminate you, by the thunder of heaven!"