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to this Thenardier, and for four years Marius had cherished
no other thought than to acquit this debt of his father’s, and
at the moment when he was on the eve of having a brigand
seized in the very act of crime by justice, destiny cried to
him: ‘This is Thenardier!’ He could at last repay this man
for his father’s life, saved amid a hail-storm of grape-shot on
the heroic field of Waterloo, and repay it with the scaffold!
He had sworn to himself that if ever he found that Thenar-
dier, he would address him only by throwing himself at his
feet; and now he actually had found him, but it was only
to deliver him over to the executioner! His father said to
him: ‘Succor Thenardier!’ And he replied to that adored and
sainted voice by crushing Thenardier! He was about to offer
to his father in his grave the spectacle of that man who had
torn him from death at the peril of his own life, executed
on the Place Saint-Jacques through the means of his son, of
that Marius to whom he had entrusted that man by his will!
And what a mockery to have so long worn on his breast his
father’s last commands, written in his own hand, only to act
in so horribly contrary a sense! But, on the other hand, now
look on that trap and not prevent it! Condemn the victim
and to spare the assassin! Could one be held to any grat-
itude towards so miserable a wretch? All the ideas which
Marius had cherished for the last four years were pierced
through and through, as it were, by this unforeseen blow.
He shuddered. Everything depended on him. Unknown
to themselves, he held in his hand all those beings who were
moving about there before his eyes. If he fired his pistol, M.
Leblanc was saved, and Thenardier lost; if he did not fire, M.