whispering in the latter's
ear:--

"It's Javert. I don't dare fire at that man. Do you dare?"

"Parbleu!" replied Thenardier.

"Well, then, fire."

Thenardier took the pistol and aimed at Javert.

Javert, who was only three paces from him, stared intently at him and
contented himself with saying:--

"Come now, don't fire. You'll miss fire."

Thenardier pulled the trigger. The pistol missed fire.

"Didn't I tell you so!" ejaculated Javert.

Bigrenaille flung his bludgeon at Javert's feet.

"You're the emperor of the fiends! I surrender."

"And you?" Javert asked the rest of the ruffians.

They replied:--

"So do we."

Javert began again calmly:--

"That's right, that's good, I said so, you are nice fellows."

"I only ask one thing," said Bigrenaille, "and that is, that I may not
be denied tobacco while I am in confinement."

"Granted," said Javert.

And turning round and calling behind him:--

"Come in now!"

A squad of policemen, sword in hand, and agents armed with bludgeons and
cudgels, rushed in at Javert's summons. They pinioned the ruffians.

This throng of men, sparely lighted by the single candle, filled the den
with shadows.

"Handcuff them all!" shouted Javert.

"Come on!" cried a voice which was not the voice of a man, but of which
no one would ever have said: "It is a woman's voice."

The Thenardier woman had entrenched herself in one of the angles of the
window, and it was she who had just given vent to this roar.

The policemen and agents recoiled.

She had thrown off her shawl, but retained her bonnet; her husband, who
was crouching behind her, was almost hidden under the discarded
shawl, and she was shielding him with her body, as she elevated the
paving-stone above her head with the gesture of a giantess on the point
of hurling a rock.

"Beware!" she shouted.

All crowded back towards the corridor. A broad open space was cleared in
the middle of the garret.

The Thenardier woman cast a glance at the ruffians who had allowed
themselves to be pinioned, and muttered in hoarse and guttural
accents:--

"The cowards!"

Javert smiled, and advanced across the open space which the Thenardier
was devouring with her eyes.

"Don't come near me," she cried, "or I'll crush you."

"What a grenadier!" ejaculated Javert; "you've got a beard like a man,
mother, but I have claws like a woman."

And he continued to advance.

The Thenardier, dishevelled and terrible, set her