lion
submitting to the claws of a lynx.

"Inspector Javert," said he, "you have me in your power. Moreover, I
have regarded myself as your prisoner ever since this morning. I did not
give you my address with any intention of escaping from you. Take me.
Only grant me one favor."

Javert did not appear to hear him. He kept his eyes riveted on Jean
Valjean. His chin being contracted, thrust his lips upwards towards
his nose, a sign of savage revery. At length he released Jean Valjean,
straightened himself stiffly up without bending, grasped his bludgeon
again firmly, and, as though in a dream, he murmured rather than uttered
this question:

"What are you doing here? And who is this man?"

He still abstained from addressing Jean Valjean as thou.

Jean Valjean replied, and the sound of his voice appeared to rouse
Javert:

"It is with regard to him that I desire to speak to you. Dispose of me
as you see fit; but first help me to carry him home. That is all that I
ask of you."

Javert's face contracted as was always the case when any one seemed to
think him capable of making a concession. Nevertheless, he did not say
"no."

Again he bent over, drew from his pocket a handkerchief which
he moistened in the water and with which he then wiped Marius'
blood-stained brow.

"This man was at the barricade," said he in a low voice and as though
speaking to himself. "He is the one they called Marius."

A spy of the first quality, who had observed everything, listened to
everything, and taken in everything, even when he thought that he was to
die; who had played the spy even in his agony, and who, with his elbows
leaning on the first step of the sepulchre, had taken notes.

He seized Marius' hand and felt his pulse.

"He is wounded," said Jean Valjean.

"He is a dead man," said Javert.

Jean Valjean replied:

"No. Not yet."

"So you have brought him thither from the barricade?" remarked Javert.

His preoccupation must indeed have been very profound for him not to
insist on this alarming rescue through the sewer, and for him not to
even notice Jean Valjean's silence after his question.

Jean Valjean, on his side, seemed to have but one thought. He resumed:

"He lives in the Marais, Rue des Filles-du-Calvaire, with his
grandfather. I do not recollect his name."

Jean Valjean fumbled in Marius' coat, pulled out his pocket-book, opened
it at the page which Marius had pencilled, and held it out to Javert.

There w