Page 1877 - les-miserables

to the pavement.
He had hardly uttered this word, when he felt a hand laid
on his shoulder with the weight of an eagle’s talon, and he
heard a voice saying to him:—
‘On your knees.’
The murderer turned round and saw before him Enjol-
ras’ cold, white face.
Enjolras held a pistol in his hand.
He had hastened up at the sound of the discharge.
He had seized Cabuc’s collar, blouse, shirt, and suspend-
er with his left hand.
‘On your knees!’ he repeated.
And, with an imperious motion, the frail young man of
twenty years bent the thickset and sturdy porter like a reed,
and brought him to his knees in the mire.
Le Cabuc attempted to resist, but he seemed to have been
seized by a superhuman hand.
Enjolras, pale, with bare neck and dishevelled hair, and
his woman’s face, had about him at that moment something
of the antique Themis. His dilated nostrils, his downcast
eyes, gave to his implacable Greek profile that expression of
wrath and that expression of Chastity which, as the ancient
world viewed the matter, befit Justice.
The whole barricade hastened up, then all ranged them-
selves in a circle at a distance, feeling that it was impossible
to utter a word in the presence of the thing which they were
about to behold.
Le Cabuc, vanquished, no longer tried to struggle, and
trembled in every limb.

1877