Page 711 - les-miserables

know my name, you will not know my residence, you will
not know where she is; and my intention is that she shall
never set eyes on you again so long as she lives. I break the
thread which binds her foot, and she departs. Does that suit
you? Yes or no?’
Since geniuses, like demons, recognize the presence of a
superior God by certain signs, Thenardier comprehended
that he had to deal with a very strong person. It was like an
intuition; he comprehended it with his clear and sagacious
promptitude. While drinking with the carters, smoking,
and singing coarse songs on the preceding evening, he had
devoted the whole of the time to observing the stranger,
watching him like a cat, and studying him like a mathe-
matician. He had watched him, both on his own account,
for the pleasure of the thing, and through instinct, and had
spied upon him as though he had been paid for so doing.
Not a movement, not a gesture, on the part of the man in the
yellow great-coat had escaped him. Even before the stranger
had so clearly manifested his interest in Cosette, Thenardier
had divined his purpose. He had caught the old man’s deep
glances returning constantly to the child. Who was this
man? Why this interest? Why this hideous costume, when
he had so much money in his purse? Questions which he
put to himself without being able to solve them, and which
irritated him. He had pondered it all night long. He could
not be Cosette’s father. Was he her grandfather? Then why
not make himself known at once? When one has a right,
one asserts it. This man evidently had no right over Cosette.
What was it, then? Thenardier lost himself in conjectures.

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