t 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 consider