Page 1355 - les-miserables

creature, which finds that it can, at last, harass what it has
feared, and insult what it has flattered, the joy of a dwarf
who should be able to set his heel on the head of Goliath,
the joy of a jackal which is beginning to rend a sick bull, so
nearly dead that he can no longer defend himself, but suffi-
ciently alive to suffer still.
M. Leblanc did not interrupt him, but said to him when
he paused:—
‘I do not know what you mean to say. You are mistaken
in me. I am a very poor man, and anything but a million-
naire. I do not know you. You are mistaking me for some
other person.’
‘Ah!’ roared Thenardier hoarsely, ‘a pretty lie! You stick
to that pleasantry, do you! You’re floundering, my old buck!
Ah! You don’t remember! You don’t see who I am?’
‘Excuse me, sir,’ said M. Leblanc with a politeness of ac-
cent, which at that moment seemed peculiarly strange and
powerful, ‘I see that you are a villain!’
Who has not remarked the fact that odious creatures pos-
sess a susceptibility of their own, that monsters are ticklish!
At this word ‘villain,’ the female Thenardier sprang from
the bed, Thenardier grasped his chair as though he were
about to crush it in his hands. ‘Don’t you stir!’ he shouted to
his wife; and, turning to M. Leblanc:—
‘Villain! Yes, I know that you call us that, you rich gen-
tlemen! Stop! it’s true that I became bankrupt, that I am in
hiding, that I have no bread, that I have not a single sou, that
I am a villain! It’s three days since I have had anything to
eat, so I’m a villain! Ah! you folks warm your feet, you have

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