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As he spoke thus, it seemed as though Thenardier, who
kept his eyes fixed on M. Leblanc, were trying to plunge the
sharp points which darted from the pupils into the very
conscience of his prisoner. Moreover, his language, which
was stamped with a sort of moderated, subdued insolence
and crafty insolence, was reserved and almost choice, and
in that rascal, who had been nothing but a robber a short
time previously, one now felt ‘the man who had studied for
the priesthood.’
The silence preserved by the prisoner, that precaution
which had been carried to the point of forgetting all anxiety
for his own life, that resistance opposed to the first impulse
of nature, which is to utter a cry, all this, it must be con-
fessed, now that his attention had been called to it, troubled
Marius, and affected him with painful astonishment.
Thenardier’s well-grounded observation still further ob-
scured for Marius the dense mystery which enveloped that
grave and singular person on whom Courfeyrac had be-
stowed the sobriquet of Monsieur Leblanc.
But whoever he was, bound with ropes, surrounded with
executioners, half plunged, so to speak, in a grave which was
closing in upon him to the extent of a degree with every mo-
ment that passed, in the presence of Thenardier’s wrath, as
in the presence of his sweetness, this man remained impas-
sive; and Marius could not refrain from admiring at such a
moment the superbly melancholy visage.
Here, evidently, was a soul which was inaccessible to ter-
ror, and which did not know the meaning of despair. Here
was one of those men who command amazement in desper-