Les miserables (Abridged) - Victor Hugo [454]
“I am listening.”
“His name is Jean Valjean.”
“I know it.”
“I am going to tell you, also for nothing, who he is.”
“Say on.”
“He is a former convict.”
“I know it.”
“You know it since I have had the honour of telling you.”
“No. I knew it before.”
Marius’ cool tone, that double reply, I know it, his laconic method of speech, embarrassing to conversation, excited some suppressed anger in the stranger. He shot furtively at Marius a furious look, which was immediately extinguished. Quick as it was, this look was one of those which are recognised after they have once been seen; it did not escape Marius. Certain flames can only come from certain souls; the eye, that window of the thought, blazes with it; spectacles hide nothing; you might as well put a glass over hell.
The stranger resumed with a smile:
“I do not permit myself to contradict Monsieur the Baron. At all events, you must see that I am informed. Now, what I have to acquaint you with, is known to myself alone. It concerns the fortune of Madame the Baroness. It is an extraordinary secret. It is for sale. I offer it to you first. Cheap. Twenty thousand francs.”
“I know that secret as well as the others,” said Marius.
The person felt the necessity of lowering his price a little.
“Monsieur Baron, say ten thousand francs, and I will go on.”
“I repeat, that you have nothing to acquaint me with. I know what you wish to tell me.”
There was a new flash in the man’s eye. He exclaimed:
“Still I must dine to-day. It is an extraordinary secret, I tell you. Monsieur the Baron, I am going to speak. I will speak. Give me twenty francs.”
Marius looked at him steadily:
“I know your extraordinary secret; just as I knew Jean Valjean’s name: just as I know your name.”
“My name?”
“Yes.”
“That is not difficult, Monsieur Baron. I have had the honour of writing it to you and telling it to you. Thénard.”
“Dier.”
“Eh?”
“Thénardier.”
“Who is that?”
In danger the porcupine bristles, the beetle feigns death, the Old Guard forms a square; this man began to laugh.
Then, with a fillip, he brushed a speck of dust from his coat-sleeve.
Marius continued:
“You are also the working-man Jondrette, the comedian Fabantou, the poet Genflot, the Spaniard Don Alvarès, and the woman Balizard.”
“The woman what?”
“And you have kept a tavern at Montfermeil.”
“A tavern! never.”
“And I tell you that you are Thénardier.”
“I deny it.”
“And that you are a scoundrel. Here.”
And Marius, taking a bank-note from his pocket, threw it in his face.
“Thanks! pardon! five hundred francs! Monsieur Baron!”
And the man, bewildered, bowing, catching the note, examined it.
“Five hundred francs!” he repeated in astonishment. And he stammered out in an undertone: “A serious fafiot [bundle]!”
Then bluntly:
“Well, so be it,” exclaimed he. “Let us make ourselves comfortable.”
And, with the agility of a monkey, throwing his hair off backwards, pulling off his spectacles, taking out of his nose and pocketing the two quill tubes of which we have just spoken, and which we have already seen elsewhere on another page of this book, he took off his countenance as one takes off his hat.
His eye kindled; his forehead, uneven, ravined, humped in spots, hideously wrinkled at the top, emerged; his nose became as sharp as a beak; the fierce and cunning profile of the man of prey appeared again.
“Monsieur the Baron is infallible,” said he in a clear voice from which all nasality has disappeared, “I am Thénardier.”
And he straightened his bent back.
Thénardier, for it was indeed he, was strangely surprised; he would have been disconcerted if he could have been. He had come to bring astonishment, and he himself received it. This humiliation had been compensated