Monsieur Thenardier, one does not require a passport to travel five leagues from Paris.
If I take Cosette away, I shall take her away, and that is the end of the matter.
You will not know my name, you will not know my residence, you will not know where she is; and my intention is that she shall never set eyes on you again so long as she lives.
I break the thread which binds her foot, and she departs.
Does that suit you?
Yes or no?"
Since geniuses, like demons, recognize the presence of a superior God by certain signs, Thenardier comprehended that he had to deal with a very strong person.
It was like an intuition; he comprehended it with his clear and sagacious promptitude.
While drinking with the carters, smoking, and singing coarse songs on the preceding evening, he had devoted the whole of the time to observing the stranger, watching him like a cat, and studying him like a mathematician. He had watched him, both on his own account, for the pleasure of the thing, and through instinct, and had spied upon him as though he had been paid for so doing.
Not a movement, not a gesture, on the part of the man in the yellow great-coat had escaped him. Even before the stranger had so clearly manifested his interest in Cosette, Thenardier had divined his purpose.
He had caught the old man''s deep glances returning constantly to the child. Who was this man?