“The young man was myself, and here is the coat!” cried Marius, and he flung upon the floor an old black coat all covered with blood.
Then, snatching the fragment from the hands of Thenardier, he crouched down over the coat, and laid the torn morsel against the tattered skirt.
The rent fitted exactly, and the strip completed the coat.
Thenardier was petrified.
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.
You came to accuse that man, you have only justified him; you wanted to ruin him, you have only succeeded in glorifying him.
And it is you who are the thief!
And it is you who are the assassin!
I saw you, Thenardier Jondrette, in that lair on the Rue de l’Hopital.
I know enough about you to send you to the galleys and even further if I choose.
Here are a thousand francs, bully that you are!”
And he flung a thousand franc note at Thenardier.
“Ah! Jondrette Thenardier, vile rascal!
Let this serve you as a lesson, you dealer in second-hand secrets, merchant of mysteries, rummager of the shadows, wretch!
Take these five hundred francs and get out of here!
Waterloo protects you.”
“Waterloo!” growled Thenardier, pocketing the five hundred francs along with the thousand.
“Yes, assassin!
You there saved the life of a Colonel. . .”
“Of a General,” said Thenardier, elevating his head.
“Of a Colonel!” repeated Marius in a rage.
“I wouldn’t give a ha’penny for a general.
And you come here to commit infamies!
I tell you that you have committed all crimes.
Go! disappear!
Only be happy, that is all that I desire.
Ah! monster! here are three thousand francs more.
Take them.
You will depart to-morrow, for America, with your daughter; for your wife is dead, you abominable liar.
I shall watch over your departure, you ruffian, and at that moment I will count out to you twenty thousand francs.
Go get yourself hung elsewhere!”
“Monsieur le Baron!” replied Thenardier, bowing to the very earth, “eternal gratitude.”
And Thenardier left the room, understanding nothing, stupefied and delighted with this sweet crushing beneath sacks of gold, and with that thunder which had burst forth over his head in bank-bills.
Struck by lightning he was, but he was also content; and he would have been greatly angered had he had a lightning rod to ward off such lightning as that.
Let us finish with this man at once.
Two days after the events which we are at this moment narrating, he set out, thanks to Marius’ care, for America under a false name, with his daughter Azelma, furnished with a draft on New York for twenty thousand francs.
The moral wretchedness of Thenardier, the bourgeois who had missed his vocation, was irremediable. He was in America what he had been in Europe.
Contact with an evil man sometimes suffices to corrupt a good action and to cause evil things to spring from it.
With Marius’ money, Thenardier set up as a slave-dealer.
As soon as Thenardier had left the house, Marius rushed to the garden, where Cosette was still walking.
“Cosette!
Cosette!” he cried. “Come! come quick!
Let us go.
Basque, a carriage!
Cosette, come.
Ah! My God!