feet far apart, threw
herself backwards, and hurled the paving-stone at Javert's head. Javert
ducked, the stone passed over him, struck the wall behind, knocked off a
huge piece of plastering, and, rebounding from angle to angle across the
hovel, now luckily almost empty, rested at Javert's feet.

At the same moment, Javert reached the Thenardier couple. One of his
big hands descended on the woman's shoulder; the other on the husband's
head.

"The handcuffs!" he shouted.

The policemen trooped in in force, and in a few seconds Javert's order
had been executed.

The Thenardier female, overwhelmed, stared at her pinioned hands, and
at those of her husband, who had dropped to the floor, and exclaimed,
weeping:--

"My daughters!"

"They are in the jug," said Javert.

In the meanwhile, the agents had caught sight of the drunken man asleep
behind the door, and were shaking him:--

He awoke, stammering:--

"Is it all over, Jondrette?"

"Yes," replied Javert.

The six pinioned ruffians were standing, and still preserved their
spectral mien; all three besmeared with black, all three masked.

"Keep on your masks," said Javert.

And passing them in review with a glance of a Frederick II. at a Potsdam
parade, he said to the three "chimney-builders":--

"Good day, Bigrenaille! good day, Brujon! good day, Deuxmilliards!"

Then turning to the three masked men, he said to the man with the
meat-axe:--

"Good day, Gueulemer!"

And to the man with the cudgel:--

"Good day, Babet!"

And to the ventriloquist:--

"Your health, Claquesous."

At that moment, he caught sight of the ruffians' prisoner, who, ever
since the entrance of the police, had not uttered a word, and had held
his head down.

"Untie the gentleman!" said Javert, "and let no one go out!"

That said, he seated himself with sovereign dignity before the table,
where the candle and the writing-materials still remained, drew a
stamped paper from his pocket, and began to prepare his report.

When he had written the first lines, which are formulas that never vary,
he raised his eyes:--

"Let the gentleman whom these gentlemen bound step forward."

The policemen glanced round them.

"Well," said Javert, "where is he?"

The prisoner of the ruffians, M. Leblanc, M. Urbain Fabre, the father of
Ursule or the Lark, had disappeared.

The door was guarded, but the window was not. As soon as he had found
himself released from his bonds, and while Jave