d to the teeth, and to whom the night lent the visages of demons,
and said in a firm, low voice:--

"Well, I don't mean that you shall."

They halted in amazement. The ventriloquist, however, finished his grin.
She went on:--

"Friends! Listen well. This is not what you want. Now I'm talking. In
the first place, if you enter this garden, if you lay a hand on this
gate, I'll scream, I'll beat on the door, I'll rouse everybody, I'll
have the whole six of you seized, I'll call the police."

"She'd do it, too," said Thenardier in a low tone to Brujon and the
ventriloquist.

She shook her head and added:--

"Beginning with my father!"

Thenardier stepped nearer.

"Not so close, my good man!" said she.

He retreated, growling between his teeth:--

"Why, what's the matter with her?"

And he added:--

"Bitch!"

She began to laugh in a terrible way:--

"As you like, but you shall not enter here. I'm not the daughter of
a dog, since I'm the daughter of a wolf. There are six of you, what
matters that to me? You are men. Well, I'm a woman. You don't frighten
me. I tell you that you shan't enter this house, because it doesn't suit
me. If you approach, I'll bark. I told you, I'm the dog, and I don't
care a straw for you. Go your way, you bore me! Go where you please, but
don't come here, I forbid it! You can use your knives. I'll use kicks;
it's all the same to me, come on!"

She advanced a pace nearer the ruffians, she was terrible, she burst out
laughing:--

"Pardine! I'm not afraid. I shall be hungry this summer, and I shall be
cold this winter. Aren't they ridiculous, these ninnies of men, to think
they can scare a girl! What! Scare? Oh, yes, much! Because you have
finical poppets of mistresses who hide under the bed when you put on a
big voice, forsooth! I ain't afraid of anything, that I ain't!"

She fastened her intent gaze upon Thenardier and said:--

"Not even of you, father!"

Then she continued, as she cast her blood-shot, spectre-like eyes upon
the ruffians in turn:--

"What do I care if I'm picked up to-morrow morning on the pavement of
the Rue Plumet, killed by the blows of my father's club, or whether I'm
found a year from now in the nets at Saint-Cloud or the Isle of Swans in
the midst of rotten old corks and drowned dogs?"

She was forced to pause; she was seized by a dry cough, her breath came
from her weak and narrow chest like the death-rattle.

She resumed:--

"I have only to cry o