Thenardier continued:—
“Mon Dieu! You might have shouted ‘stop thief’ a bit, and I should not have thought it improper.
‘Murder!’
That, too, is said occasionally, and, so far as I am concerned, I should not have taken it in bad part.
It is very natural that you should make a little row when you find yourself with persons who don’t inspire you with sufficient confidence.
You might have done that, and no one would have troubled you on that account.
You would not even have been gagged.
And I will tell you why.
This room is very private.
That’s its only recommendation, but it has that in its favor.
You might fire off a mortar and it would produce about as much noise at the nearest police station as the snores of a drunken man.
Here a cannon would make a boum, and the thunder would make a pouf.
It’s a handy lodging.
But, in short, you did not shout, and it is better so.
I present you my compliments, and I will tell you the conclusion that I draw from that fact: My dear sir, when a man shouts, who comes?
The police.
And after the police?
Justice.
Well! You have not made an outcry; that is because you don’t care to have the police and the courts come in any more than we do.
It is because,—I have long suspected it,—you have some interest in hiding something.
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.
Moreover, his language, which was stamped with a sort of moderated, subdued insolence and crafty insolence, was reserved and almost choice, and in that rascal, who had been nothing but a robber a short time previously, one now felt “the man who had studied for the priesthood.”
The silence preserved by the prisoner, that precaution which had been carried to the point of forgetting all anxiety for his own life, that resistance opposed to the first impulse of nature, which is to utter a cry, all this, it must be confessed, now that his attention had been called to it, troubled Marius, and affected him with painful astonishment.
Thenardier’s well-grounded observation still further obscured for Marius the dense mystery which enveloped that grave and singular person on whom Courfeyrac had bestowed the sobriquet of Monsieur Leblanc.
But whoever he was, bound with ropes, surrounded with executioners, half plunged, so to speak, in a grave which was closing in upon him to the extent of a degree with every moment that passed, in the presence of Thenardier’s wrath, as in the presence of his sweetness, this man remained impassive; and Marius could not refrain from admiring at such a moment the superbly melancholy visage.
Here, evidently, was a soul which was inaccessible to terror, and which did not know the meaning of despair.
Here was one of those men who command amazement in desperate circumstances.
Extreme as was the crisis, inevitable as was the catastrophe, there was nothing here of the agony of the drowning man, who opens his horror-filled eyes under the water.
Thenardier rose in an unpretending manner, went to the fireplace, shoved aside the screen, which he leaned against the neighboring pallet, and thus unmasked the brazier full of glowing coals, in which the prisoner could plainly see the chisel white-hot and spotted here and there with tiny scarlet stars.
Then Thenardier returned to his seat beside M. Leblanc.
“I continue,” said he.
“We can come to an understanding.
Let us arrange this matter in an amicable way.
I was wrong to lose my temper just now, I don’t know what I was thinking of, I went a great deal too far, I said extravagant things.
For example, because you are a millionnaire, I told you that I exacted money, a lot of money, a deal of money.
That would not be reasonable.
Mon Dieu, in spite of your riches, you have expenses of your own—who has not?
I don’t want to ruin you, I am not a greedy fellow, after all.
I am not one of those people who, because they have the advantage of the position, profit by the fact to make themselves ridiculous.
Why, I’m taking things into consideration and making a sacrifice on my side.
I only want two hundred thousand francs.”
M. Leblanc uttered not a word.
Thenardier went on:—
“You see that I put not a little water in my wine; I’m very moderate.
I don’t know the state of your fortune, but I do know that you don’t stick at money, and a benevolent man like yourself can certainly give two hundred thousand francs to the father of a family who is out of luck.
Certainly, you are reasonable, too; you haven’t imagined that I should take all the trouble I have to-day and organized this affair this evening, which has been labor well bestowed, in the opinion of these gentlemen, merely to wind up by asking you for enough to go and drink red wine at fifteen sous and eat veal at Desnoyer’s.
Two hundred thousand francs—it’s surely worth all that.
This trifle once out of your pocket, I guarantee you that that’s the end of the matter, and that you have no further demands to fear.
You will say to me: