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He was half out when six robust fists seized him and dragged him back energetically into the hovel. These were the three "chimney-builders," who had flung themselves upon him. At the same time the Thenardier woman had wound her hands in his hair. At the trampling which ensued, the other ruffians rushed up from the corridor.
Every new-comer who entered the tavern said, on catching sight of Madame Thenardier, "There is the master of the house." A mistake. She was not even the mistress. The husband was both master and mistress. She worked; he created. He directed everything by a sort of invisible and constant magnetic action. A word was sufficient for him, sometimes a sign; the mastodon obeyed.
On our side we have the same interest. So we can come to an understanding." As he spoke thus, it seemed as though Thenardier, who kept his eyes fixed on M. Leblanc, were trying to plunge the sharp points which darted from the pupils into the very conscience of his prisoner.
This is what he thought: "I'm struck all of a heap." Marius rose to his feet trembling, despairing, radiant. He fumbled in his pocket and stalked furiously to Thenardier, presenting to him and almost thrusting in his face his fist filled with bank-notes for five hundred and a thousand francs. "You are an infamous wretch! you are a liar, a calumniator, a villain.
It was impossible for him to leave all these arrears of suffering behind him, and he wished, before entering joyously into the future, to obtain a quittance from the past. That Thenardier was a villain detracted nothing from the fact that he had saved Colonel Pontmercy. Thenardier was a ruffian in the eyes of all the world except Marius.
Thenardier was a sort of special and sovereign being in Madame Thenardier's eyes, though she did not thoroughly realize it. She was possessed of virtues after her own kind; if she had ever had a disagreement as to any detail with "Monsieur Thenardier," which was an inadmissible hypothesis, by the way, she would not have blamed her husband in public on any subject whatever.
This man and this woman were ruse and rage wedded a hideous and terrible team. While the husband pondered and combined, Madame Thenardier thought not of absent creditors, took no heed of yesterday nor of to-morrow, and lived in a fit of anger, all in a minute. Such were these two beings.
On the evening of the day when she had handed over her two little ones to Magnon, with express intention of renouncing them forever, the Thenardier had felt, or had appeared to feel, a scruple. She said to her husband: "But this is abandoning our children!" Thenardier, masterful and phlegmatic, cauterized the scruple with this saying: "Jean Jacques Rousseau did even better!"
At such a gallop, the bourgeoise will be back inside three-quarters of an hour." He drew a chair close to the fireplace, folding his arms, and presenting his muddy boots to the brazier. "My feet are cold!" said he. Only five ruffians now remained in the den with Thenardier and the prisoner.
"And you kept a pot-house at Montfermeil." "A pot-house! Never." "And I tell you that your name is Thenardier." "I deny it." "And that you are a rascal. Here." And Marius drew a bank-note from his pocket and flung it in his face. "Thanks! Pardon me! five hundred francs! Monsieur le Baron!" And the man, overcome, bowed, seized the note and examined it.
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