All at once he paused and dealt himself a blow on his forehead like a man who has forgotten some essential point and who is ready to retrace his steps.
"I ought to have taken my gun," said he to himself.
Thenardier was one of those double natures which sometimes pass through our midst without our being aware of the fact, and who disappear without our finding them out, because destiny has only exhibited one side of them.
It is the fate of many men to live thus half submerged.
In a calm and even situation, Thenardier possessed all that is required to make--we will not say to be-- what people have agreed to call an honest trader, a good bourgeois. At the same time certain circumstances being given, certain shocks arriving to bring his under-nature to the surface, he had all the requisites for a blackguard.
He was a shopkeeper in whom there was some taint of the monster.
Satan must have occasionally crouched down in some corner of the hovel in which Thenardier dwelt, and have fallen a-dreaming in the presence of this hideous masterpiece.
After a momentary hesitation:--
"Bah!" he thought; "they will have time to make their escape."
And he pursued his road, walking rapidly straight ahead, and with almost an air of certainty, with the sagacity of a fox scenting a covey of partridges.
In truth, when he had passed the ponds and had traversed in an oblique direction the large clearing which lies on the right of the Avenue de Bellevue, and reached that turf alley which nearly makes the circuit of the hill, and covers the arch of the ancient aqueduct of the Abbey of Chelles, he caught sight, over the top of the brushwood, of the hat on which he had already erected so many conjectures; it was that man's hat.
The brushwood was not high.
Thenardier recognized the fact that the man and Cosette were sitting there.
The child could not be seen on account of her small size, but the head of her doll was visible.
Thenardier was not mistaken.
The man was sitting there, and letting Cosette get somewhat rested.
The inn-keeper walked round the brushwood and presented himself abruptly to the eyes of those whom he was in search of.
"Pardon, excuse me, sir," he said, quite breathless, "but here are your fifteen hundred francs."
So saying, he handed the stranger the three bank-bills.
The man raised his eyes.