"Halt there," said he. "You shall not go out by the window, you shall go through the door. It"s less unhealthy. There are seven of you, there are fifteen of us. Don"t let"s fall to collaring each other like men of Auvergne."
Bigrenaille drew out a pistol which he had kept concealed under his blouse, and put it in Thenardier"s hand, whispering in the latter"s ear:--
"It"s Javert. I don"t dare fire at that man. Do you dare?"
"Parbleu!" replied Thenardier.
"Well, then, fire."
Thenardier took the pistol and aimed at Javert.
Javert, who was only three paces from him, stared intently at him and contented himself with saying:--
"Come now, don"t fire. You"ll miss fire."
Thenardier pulled the trigger. The pistol missed fire.
"Didn"t I tell you so!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Javert.
Bigrenaille flung his bludgeon at Javert"s feet.
"You"re the emperor of the fiends! I surrender."
"And you?" Javert asked the rest of the ruffians.
They replied:--
"So do we."
Javert began again calmly:--
"That"s right, that"s good, I said so, you are nice fellows."
"I only ask one thing," said Bigrenaille, "and that is, that I may not be denied tobacco while I am in confinement."
"Granted," said Javert.
And turning round and calling behind him:--
"Come in now!"
A squad of policemen, sword in hand, and agents armed with bludgeons and cudgels, rushed in at Javert"s summons. They pinioned the ruffians.
This throng of men, sparely lighted by the single candle, filled the den with shadows.
"Handcuff them all!" shouted Javert.
"Come on!" cried a voice which was not the voice of a man, but of which no one would ever have said: "It is a woman"s voice."
The Thenardier woman had entrenched herself in one of the angles of the window, and it was she who had just given vent to this roar.
The policemen and agents recoiled.
She had thrown off her shawl, but retained her bonnet; her husband, who was crouching behind her, was almost hidden under the discarded shawl, and she was shielding him with her body, as she elevated the paving-stone above her head with the gesture of a giantess on the point of hurling a rock.
"Beware!" she shouted.
All crowded back towards the corridor. A broad open s.p.a.ce was cleared in the middle of the garret.
The Thenardier woman cast a glance at the ruffians who had allowed themselves to be pinioned, and muttered in hoa.r.s.e and guttural accents:--
"The cowards!"
Javert smiled, and advanced across the open s.p.a.ce which the Thenardier was devouring with her eyes.
"Don"t come near me," she cried, "or I"ll crush you."
"What a grenadier!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Javert; "you"ve got a beard like a man, mother, but I have claws like a woman."
And he continued to advance.
The Thenardier, dishevelled and terrible, set her feet far apart, threw herself backwards, and hurled the paving-stone at Javert"s head. Javert ducked, the stone pa.s.sed over him, struck the wall behind, knocked off a huge piece of plastering, and, rebounding from angle to angle across the hovel, now luckily almost empty, rested at Javert"s feet.
At the same moment, Javert reached the Thenardier couple. One of his big hands descended on the woman"s shoulder; the other on the husband"s head.
"The handcuffs!" he shouted.
The policemen trooped in in force, and in a few seconds Javert"s order had been executed.
The Thenardier female, overwhelmed, stared at her pinioned hands, and at those of her husband, who had dropped to the floor, and exclaimed, weeping:--
"My daughters!"
"They are in the jug," said Javert.
In the meanwhile, the agents had caught sight of the drunken man asleep behind the door, and were shaking him:--
He awoke, stammering:--
"Is it all over, Jondrette?"
"Yes," replied Javert.
The six pinioned ruffians were standing, and still preserved their spectral mien; all three besmeared with black, all three masked.
"Keep on your masks," said Javert.
And pa.s.sing them in review with a glance of a Frederick II. at a Potsdam parade, he said to the three "chimney-builders":--