Oh! I wish all the wine folks drank in my house had been poison to those who drank it!
Well, never mind!
Say, now! You must have thought me ridiculous when you went off with the Lark!
You had your cudgel in the forest.
You were the stronger.
Revenge.
I’m the one to hold the trumps to-day!
You’re in a sorry case, my good fellow!
Oh, but I can laugh! Really, I laugh!
Didn’t he fall into the trap!
I told him that I was an actor, that my name was Fabantou, that I had played comedy with Mamselle Mars, with Mamselle Muche, that my landlord insisted on being paid tomorrow, the 4th of February, and he didn’t even notice that the 8th of January, and not the 4th of February is the time when the quarter runs out!
Absurd idiot! And the four miserable Philippes which he has brought me! Scoundrel!
He hadn’t the heart even to go as high as a hundred francs!
And how he swallowed my platitudes!
That did amuse me.
I said to myself:
‘Blockhead! Come, I’ve got you!
I lick your paws this morning, but I’ll gnaw your heart this evening!’”
Thenardier paused.
He was out of breath.
His little, narrow chest panted like a forge bellows.
His eyes were full of the ignoble happiness of a feeble, cruel, and cowardly creature, which finds that it can, at last, harass what it has feared, and insult what it has flattered, the joy of a dwarf who should be able to set his heel on the head of Goliath, the joy of a jackal which is beginning to rend a sick bull, so nearly dead that he can no longer defend himself, but sufficiently alive to suffer still.
M. Leblanc did not interrupt him, but said to him when he paused:—
“I do not know what you mean to say.
You are mistaken in me.
I am a very poor man, and anything but a millionnaire.
I do not know you.
You are mistaking me for some other person.”
“Ah!” roared Thenardier hoarsely, “a pretty lie!
You stick to that pleasantry, do you!
You’re floundering, my old buck!
Ah! You don’t remember!
You don’t see who I am?”
“Excuse me, sir,” said M. Leblanc with a politeness of accent, which at that moment seemed peculiarly strange and powerful, “I see that you are a villain!”
Who has not remarked the fact that odious creatures possess a susceptibility of their own, that monsters are ticklish!
At this word “villain,” the female Thenardier sprang from the bed, Thenardier grasped his chair as though he were about to crush it in his hands.
“Don’t you stir!” he shouted to his wife; and, turning to M. Leblanc:—
“Villain!
Yes, I know that you call us that, you rich gentlemen!
Stop! it’s true that I became bankrupt, that I am in hiding, that I have no bread, that I have not a single sou, that I am a villain!
It’s three days since I have had anything to eat, so I’m a villain!
Ah! you folks warm your feet, you have Sakoski boots, you have wadded great-coats, like archbishops, you lodge on the first floor in houses that have porters, you eat truffles, you eat asparagus at forty francs the bunch in the month of January, and green peas, you gorge yourselves, and when you want to know whether it is cold, you look in the papers to see what the engineer Chevalier’s thermometer says about it.
We, it is we who are thermometers.
We don’t need to go out and look on the quay at the corner of the Tour de l’Horologe, to find out the number of degrees of cold; we feel our blood congealing in our veins, and the ice forming round our hearts, and we say:
‘There is no God!’
And you come to our caverns, yes our caverns, for the purpose of calling us villains!
But we’ll devour you! But we’ll devour you, poor little things!
Just see here, Mister millionnaire: I have been a solid man, I have held a license, I have been an elector, I am a bourgeois, that I am!
And it’s quite possible that you are not!”
Here Thenardier took a step towards the men who stood near the door, and added with a shudder:—