imney-builders," whose smirched face was lighted up by
the candle, and in whom Marius recognized, in spite of his daubing,
Panchaud, alias Printanier, alias Bigrenaille, lifted above M. Leblanc's
head a sort of bludgeon made of two balls of lead, at the two ends of a
bar of iron.

Marius could not resist this sight. "My father," he thought, "forgive
me!"

And his finger sought the trigger of his pistol.

The shot was on the point of being discharged when Thenardier's voice
shouted:--

"Don't harm him!"

This desperate attempt of the victim, far from exasperating Thenardier,
had calmed him. There existed in him two men, the ferocious man and
the adroit man. Up to that moment, in the excess of his triumph in the
presence of the prey which had been brought down, and which did not
stir, the ferocious man had prevailed; when the victim struggled and
tried to resist, the adroit man reappeared and took the upper hand.

"Don't hurt him!" he repeated, and without suspecting it, his first
success was to arrest the pistol in the act of being discharged, and to
paralyze Marius, in whose opinion the urgency of the case disappeared,
and who, in the face of this new phase, saw no inconvenience in waiting
a while longer.

Who knows whether some chance would not arise which would deliver him
from the horrible alternative of allowing Ursule's father to perish, or
of destroying the colonel's saviour?

A herculean struggle had begun. With one blow full in the chest, M.
Leblanc had sent the old man tumbling, rolling in the middle of the
room, then with two backward sweeps of his hand he had overthrown two
more assailants, and he held one under each of his knees; the wretches
were rattling in the throat beneath this pressure as under a granite
millstone; but the other four had seized the formidable old man by both
arms and the back of his neck, and were holding him doubled up over the
two "chimney-builders" on the floor.

Thus, the master of some and mastered by the rest, crushing those
beneath him and stifling under those on top of him, endeavoring in vain
to shake off all the efforts which were heaped upon him, M. Leblanc
disappeared under the horrible group of ruffians like the wild boar
beneath a howling pile of dogs and hounds.

They succeeded in overthrowing him upon the bed nearest the window, and
there they held him in awe. The Thenardier woman had not released her
clutch on his hair.

"Don't you mix yourself up in thi