United States or Guernsey ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Marius gazed intently at him: "I know your extraordinary secret, just as I knew Jean Valjean's name, just as I know your name." "My name?" "Yes." "That is not difficult, Monsieur le Baron. I had the honor to write to you and to tell it to you. Thenard." " Dier." "Hey?" "Thenardier." "Who's that?"
His father said to him: "Succor Thenardier!" And he replied to that adored and sainted voice by crushing Thenardier! He was about to offer to his father in his grave the spectacle of that man who had torn him from death at the peril of his own life, executed on the Place Saint-Jacques through the means of his son, of that Marius to whom he had entrusted that man by his will!
"Is he asleep?" thought Thenardier. The man was not asleep, but nothing could arouse him. At last Thenardier took off his cap, stepped gently up to him, and ventured to say: "Is not Monsieur going to his repose?" Not going to bed would have seemed to him excessive and familiar. To repose smacked of luxury and respect.
The tumult of his thoughts contrasted with the funereal silence of the den. In the midst of this silence, the door at the bottom of the staircase was heard to open and shut again. The prisoner made a movement in his bonds. "Here's the bourgeoise," said Thenardier.
Jean Valjean, who was chiefly concerned in keeping his back to the light, let him have his way. While handling Marius' coat, Thenardier, with the skill of a pickpocket, and without being noticed by Jean Valjean, tore off a strip which he concealed under his blouse, probably thinking that this morsel of stuff might serve, later on, to identify the assassinated man and the assassin.
I am a little fatigued, permit me to take a chair." Marius seated himself and motioned to him to do the same. Thenardier installed himself on a tufted chair, picked up his two newspapers, thrust them back into their envelope, and murmured as he pecked at the Drapeau Blanc with his nail: "It cost me a good deal of trouble to get this one."
Marius's faltering fingers had come near letting the pistol fall. Jondrette, by revealing his identity, had not moved M. Leblanc, but he had quite upset Marius. That name of Thenardier, with which M. Leblanc did not seem to be acquainted, Marius knew well. Let the reader recall what that name meant to him! That name he had worn on his heart, inscribed in his father's testament!
Azelma listened admiringly to Eponine. In the meantime, the drinkers had begun to sing an obscene song, and to laugh at it until the ceiling shook. Thenardier accompanied and encouraged them. As birds make nests out of everything, so children make a doll out of anything which comes to hand. While Eponine and Azelma were bundling up the cat, Cosette, on her side, had dressed up her sword.
Cosette was thinking that it was dark, very dark, that the pitchers and caraffes in the chambers of the travellers who had arrived must have been filled and that there was no more water in the cistern. She was somewhat reassured because no one in the Thenardier establishment drank much water.
Questions which he put to himself without being able to solve them, and which irritated him. He had pondered it all night long. He could not be Cosette's father. Was he her grandfather? Then why not make himself known at once? When one has a right, one asserts it. This man evidently had no right over Cosette. What was it, then? Thenardier lost himself in conjectures.
Word Of The Day