Page 337 - les-miserables

hurt me. I was not expecting that snow from the gentleman
at all; and then as I told you, I am not well; I have a cough;
I seem to have a burning ball in my stomach, and the doc-
tor tells me, ‘Take care of yourself.’ Here, feel, give me your
hand; don’t be afraid— it is here.’
She no longer wept, her voice was caressing; she placed
Javert’s coarse hand on her delicate, white throat and looked
smilingly at him.
All at once she rapidly adjusted her disordered garments,
dropped the folds of her skirt, which had been pushed up as
she dragged herself along, almost to the height of her knee,
and stepped towards the door, saying to the soldiers in a low
voice, and with a friendly nod:—
‘Children, Monsieur l’Inspecteur has said that I am to be
released, and I am going.’
She laid her hand on the latch of the door. One step more
and she would be in the street.
Javert up to that moment had remained erect, motion-
less, with his eyes fixed on the ground, cast athwart this
scene like some displaced statue, which is waiting to be put
away somewhere.
The sound of the latch roused him. He raised his head
with an expression of sovereign authority, an expression all
the more alarming in proportion as the authority rests on a
low level, ferocious in the wild beast, atrocious in the man
of no estate.
‘Sergeant!’ he cried, ‘don’t you see that that jade is walk-
ing off! Who bade you let her go?’
‘I,’ said Madeleine.

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