was almost hidden under the discarded shawl, and she was shielding him with her body, as she elevated the paving-stone above her head with the gesture of a giantess on the point of hurling a rock.
"Beware!" she shouted.
All crowded back towards the corridor.
A broad open space was cleared in the middle of the garret.
The Thenardier woman cast a glance at the ruffians who had allowed themselves to be pinioned, and muttered in hoarse and guttural accents:--
"The cowards!"
Javert smiled, and advanced across the open space which the Thenardier was devouring with her eyes.
"Don''t come near me," she cried, "or I''ll crush you."
"What a grenadier!" ejaculated Javert; "you''ve got a beard like a man, mother, but I have claws like a woman."
And he continued to advance.
The Thenardier, dishevelled and terrible, set her feet far apart, threw herself backwards, and hurled the paving-stone at Javert''s head. Javert ducked, the stone passed over him, struck the wall behind, knocked off a huge piece of plastering, and, rebounding from angle to angle across the hovel, now luckily almost empty, rested at Javert''s feet.
At the same moment, Javert reached the Thenardier couple. One of his big hands descended on the woman''s shoulder; the other on the husband''s head.
"The handcuffs!" he shouted.
The policemen trooped in in force, and in a few seconds Javert''s order had been executed.