Les miserables (Abridged) - Victor Hugo [283]
A herculean struggle had commenced. With one blow full in the chest M. Leblanc had sent the old man sprawling into the middle of the room, then with two back strokes had knocked down two other assailants, whom he held one under each knee; the wretches screamed under the pressure as if they had been under a granite mill-stone; but the four others had seized the formidable old man by the arms and the back, and held him down over the two prostrate “chimney doctors.” Thus, master of the latter and mastered by the former, crushing those below him and suffocating under those above him, vainly endeavouring to shake off all the violence and blows which were heaped upon him, M. Leblanc disappeared under the horrible group of the bandits, like a wild boar under a howling pack of hounds and mastiffs.
They succeeded in throwing him over upon the bed nearest to the window and held him there at bay. The Thénardiess had not let go of his hair.
“Here,” said Thénardier, “stay out of it. You will tear your shawl.”
The Thénardiess obeyed, as the she-wolf obeys her mate, with a growl.
“Now, the rest of you,” continued Thénardier, “search him.”
M. Leblanc seemed to have given up all resistance. They searched him. There was nothing upon him but a leather purse which contained six francs, and his handkerchief.
Thénardier put the handkerchief in his pocket.
“What! no pocket-book?” he asked.
“Nor any watch,” answered one of the “chimney doctors.”
“It is all the same,” muttered, with the voice of a ventriloquist, the masked man who had the big key, “he is a tough old bird.”
Thénardier went to the corner by the door and took a bundle of ropes which he threw to them.
“Tie him to the foot of the bed,” said he, and perceiving the old fellow who lay motionless, when he was stretched across the room by the blow of M. Leblanc’s fist:
“Is Boulatruelle dead?” asked he.
“No,” answered Bigrenaille, “he is drunk.”
“Sweep him into a corner,” said Thénardier.
Two of the “chimney doctors” pushed the drunkard up to the heap of old iron with their feet.
“Babet, what did you bring so many for?” said Thénardier in a low tone to the man with the cudgel, “it was needless.”
“What would you have?” replied the man with the cudgel, “they all wanted to be in. The season is bad. There is nothing doing.”
The pallet upon which M. Leblanc had been thrown was a sort of hospital bed supported by four big roughly squared wooden posts. M. Leblanc made no resistance. The brigands bound him firmly, standing, with his feet to the floor, by the bed-post furthest from the window and nearest to the chimney.
When the last knot was tied, Thénardier took a chair and came and sat down nearly in front of M. Leblanc. Thénardier looked no longer like himself, in a few seconds the expression of his face had passed from unbridled violence to tranquil and crafty mildness. Marius hardly recognised in that polite, clerkly smile, the almost beastly mouth which was foaming a moment before; he looked with astonishment upon this fantastic and alarming metamorphosis, and he experienced what a man would feel who should see a tiger change itself into an attorney.
“Monsieur,” said Thénardier.
And with a gesture dismissing the brigands who still had their hands upon M. Leblanc:
“Move off a little, and let me talk with monsieur.”
They all retired towards the door. He resumed:
“Monsieur, you were wrong in trying to jump out the window. You might have broken your leg. Now, if you please, we will talk quietly. In the first place I must inform you of a circumstance I have noticed, which is that you have not yet made the least outcry.”
Thénardier was right; this detail was true, although it had escaped Marius in his anxiety. M. Leblanc had only uttered a few