Page 2429 - les-miserables

You will depart to-morrow, for America, with your daugh-
ter; for your wife is dead, you abominable liar. I shall watch
over your departure, you ruffian, and at that moment I will
count out to you twenty thousand francs. Go get yourself
hung elsewhere!’
‘Monsieur le Baron!’ replied Thenardier, bowing to the
very earth, ‘eternal gratitude.’ And Thenardier left the room,
understanding nothing, stupefied and delighted with this
sweet crushing beneath sacks of gold, and with that thunder
which had burst forth over his head in bank-bills.
Struck by lightning he was, but he was also content; and
he would have been greatly angered had he had a lightning
rod to ward off such lightning as that.
Let us finish with this man at once.
Two days after the events which we are at this moment
narrating, he set out, thanks to Marius’ care, for America
under a false name, with his daughter Azelma, furnished
with a draft on New York for twenty thousand francs.
The moral wretchedness of Thenardier, the bourgeois
who had missed his vocation, was irremediable. He was
in America what he had been in Europe. Contact with an
evil man sometimes suffices to corrupt a good action and
to cause evil things to spring from it. With Marius’ money,
Thenardier set up as a slave-dealer.
As soon as Thenardier had left the house, Marius rushed
to the garden, where Cosette was still walking.
‘Cosette! Cosette!’ he cried. ‘Come! come quick! Let us
go. Basque, a carriage! Cosette, come. Ah! My God! It was
he who saved my life! Let us not lose a minute! Put on your

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