1352 Les Miserables
Leblanc would be sacrificed, and, who knows? Thenardier
would escape. Should he dash down the one or allow the
other to fall? Remorse awaited him in either case.
What was he to do? What should he choose? Be false to
the most imperious souvenirs, to all those solemn vows to
himself, to the most sacred duty, to the most venerated text!
Should he ignore his father’s testament, or allow the perpe-
tration of a crime! On the one hand, it seemed to him that
he heard ‘his Ursule’ supplicating for her father and on the
other, the colonel commending Thenardier to his care. He
felt that he was going mad. His knees gave way beneath him.
And he had not even the time for deliberation, so great was
the fury with which the scene before his eyes was hastening
to its catastrophe. It was like a whirlwind of which he had
thought himself the master, and which was now sweeping
him away. He was on the verge of swooning.
In the meantime, Thenardier, whom we shall henceforth
call by no other name, was pacing up and down in front of
the table in a sort of frenzy and wild triumph.
He seized the candle in his fist, and set it on the chim-
ney-piece with so violent a bang that the wick came near
being extinguished, and the tallow bespattered the wall.
Then he turned to M. Leblanc with a horrible look, and
spit out these words:—
‘Done for! Smoked brown! Cooked! Spitchcocked!’
And again he began to march back and forth, in full
eruption.
‘Ah!’ he cried, ‘so I’ve found you again at last, Mister phi-
lanthropist! Mister threadbare millionnaire! Mister giver of