"After all, people should be just. I can understand that you are a just man, M. Javert; in fact, it is quite simple; a man who played at putting snow down a woman's back, made the officers laugh; they must have some amusement, and we girls are sent into the world for them to make fun of. And then you came up: you are compelled to restore order; you remove the woman who was in the wrong, but, on reflection, as you are kind-hearted, you order me to be set at liberty, for the sake of my little girl, for six months' imprisonment would prevent my supporting her. Only don't come here again, fagot! Oh, I will not come here again, M. Javert; they can do what they like to me in future, and I will not stir. Still I cried out to-night because it hurt me; I did not at all expect that gentleman's snow; and then besides, as I told you; I am not very well,--I cough, I have something like a ball in my stomach which burns, and the doctor says: "Take care of yourself." Here, feel, give me your hand; do not be frightened." She no longer cried, her voice was caressing; she laid Javert's large coarse hand on her white, delicate throat, and looked up at him smilingly. All at once she hurriedly repaired the disorder in her clothes, let the folds of her dress fall, which had been almost dragged up to her knee, and walked toward the door, saying to the soldiers with a friendly nod,-- "My lads, M. Javert says I may go, so I will be off." She laid her hand on the hasp; one step further, and she would be in the street. Up to this moment Javert had stood motionless, with his eyes fixed on the ground, appearing in the centre of this scene like a statue waiting to be put up in its proper place. The sound of the hasp aroused him: he raised his head with an expression of sovereign authority,--an expression the more frightful, the lower the man in power stands; it is ferocity in the wild beast, atrocity in the nobody. "Sergeant," he shouted, "do you not see that the wench is bolting? Who told you to let her go?" "I did," said Madeleine.