then went on:--

"Monsieur Thenardier! That old fellow has duped you! You are too good,
you see! If it had been me, I'd have chopped the beast in four quarters
to begin with! And if he had acted ugly, I'd have boiled him alive! He
would have been obliged to speak, and say where the girl is, and where
he keeps his shiners! That's the way I should have managed matters!
People are perfectly right when they say that men are a deal stupider
than women! Nobody at No. 17. It's nothing but a big carriage gate! No
Monsieur Fabre in the Rue Saint-Dominique! And after all that racing
and fee to the coachman and all! I spoke to both the porter and the
portress, a fine, stout woman, and they know nothing about him!"

Marius breathed freely once more.

She, Ursule or the Lark, he no longer knew what to call her, was safe.

While his exasperated wife vociferated, Thenardier had seated himself on
the table.

For several minutes he uttered not a word, but swung his right foot,
which hung down, and stared at the brazier with an air of savage revery.

Finally, he said to the prisoner, with a slow and singularly ferocious
tone:

"A false address? What did you expect to gain by that?"

"To gain time!" cried the prisoner in a thundering voice, and at the
same instant he shook off his bonds; they were cut. The prisoner was
only attached to the bed now by one leg.

Before the seven men had time to collect their senses and dash forward,
he had bent down into the fireplace, had stretched out his hand to the
brazier, and had then straightened himself up again, and now Thenardier,
the female Thenardier, and the ruffians, huddled in amazement at the
extremity of the hovel, stared at him in stupefaction, as almost free
and in a formidable attitude, he brandished above his head the red-hot
chisel, which emitted a threatening glow.

The judicial examination to which the ambush in the Gorbeau house
eventually gave rise, established the fact that a large sou piece, cut
and worked in a peculiar fashion, was found in the garret, when the
police made their descent on it. This sou piece was one of those marvels
of industry, which are engendered by the patience of the galleys in
the shadows and for the shadows, marvels which are nothing else than
instruments of escape. These hideous and delicate products of wonderful
art are to jewellers' work what the metaphors of slang are to poetry.
There are Benvenuto Cellinis in the galleys, just as there ar