nd stripped himself in your favor, and I
consider the combination ingenious; but he has no longer a son, he would
show me his empty hands, and, since I am in need of some money for
my trip to la Joya, I prefer you, you who have it all, to him who has
nothing. I am a little fatigued, permit me to take a chair."

Marius seated himself and motioned to him to do the same.

Thenardier installed himself on a tufted chair, picked up his two
newspapers, thrust them back into their envelope, and murmured as he
pecked at the Drapeau Blanc with his nail: "It cost me a good deal of
trouble to get this one."

That done he crossed his legs and stretched himself out on the back of
the chair, an attitude characteristic of people who are sure of what
they are saying, then he entered upon his subject gravely, emphasizing
his words:

"Monsieur le Baron, on the 6th of June, 1832, about a year ago, on the
day of the insurrection, a man was in the Grand Sewer of Paris, at the
point where the sewer enters the Seine, between the Pont des Invalides
and the Pont de Jena."

Marius abruptly drew his chair closer to that of Thenardier. Thenardier
noticed this movement and continued with the deliberation of an orator
who holds his interlocutor and who feels his adversary palpitating under
his words:

"This man, forced to conceal himself, and for reasons, moreover, which
are foreign to politics, had adopted the sewer as his domicile and had
a key to it. It was, I repeat, on the 6th of June; it might have been
eight o'clock in the evening. The man hears a noise in the sewer.
Greatly surprised, he hides himself and lies in wait. It was the sound
of footsteps, some one was walking in the dark, and coming in his
direction. Strange to say, there was another man in the sewer besides
himself. The grating of the outlet from the sewer was not far off.
A little light which fell through it permitted him to recognize the
newcomer, and to see that the man was carrying something on his back.
He was walking in a bent attitude. The man who was walking in a bent
attitude was an ex-convict, and what he was dragging on his shoulders
was a corpse. Assassination caught in the very act, if ever there was
such a thing. As for the theft, that is understood; one does not kill
a man gratis. This convict was on his way to fling the body into the
river. One fact is to be noticed, that before reaching the exit
grating, this convict, who had come a long distance in the sew