"Do him no harm!" he repeated; and his first service was, though he little suspected it, that he stopped the discharge of the pistol and paralyzed Marius, to whom the affair did not appear so urgent, and who in the presence of this new phase saw no harm in waiting a little longer. Who knew whether some accident might not occur which would deliver him from the frightful alternative of letting Ursule's father perish, or destroying the Colonels savior? A herculean struggle had commenced. With one blow of his fist in the chest M. Leblanc sent the old man rolling in the middle of the room, and then with two back-handers knocked down two other assailants, and held one under each of his knees. The villains groaned under this pressure as under a granite mill-stone; but the four others had seized the formidable old man by the arms and neck, and were holding him down upon the two "chimney-menders." Thus, master of two, and mastered by the others, crushing those beneath him, and crushed by those above him, M. Leblanc disappeared beneath this horrible group of bandits, like a boar attacked by a howling pack of dogs. They succeeded in throwing him on to the bed nearest the window, and held him down. Mother Thénardier did not once let go his hair. "Don't you interfere," Thénardier said to her; "you will tear your shawl." The woman obeyed, as the she-wolf obeys the wolf, with a snarl. "You fellows," Thénardier continued, "can search him." M. Leblanc appeared to have given up all thought of resistance, and they searched him. He had nothing about him but a leathern purse containing six francs and his handkerchief. Thénardier put the latter in his own pocket. "What! no pocket-book?" he asked. "No, and no watch," one of the "chimney-menders" replied. "No matter," the masked man who held the large key muttered in the voice of a ventriloquist, "he is a tough old bird." Thénardier went to the corner near the door, and took up some ropes, which he threw to them. "Fasten him to the foot of the bed," he said; and noticing the old man whom M. Leblanc had knocked down still motionless on the floor, he asked,-- "Is Boulatruelle dead?" "No," Bigrenaille answered, "he's drunk." "Sweep him into a corner," Thénardier said. Two of the "chimney-menders" thrust the drunkard with their feet to the side of the old iron. "Babet, why did you bring so many?" Thénardier said in a whisper to the man with the cudgel; "it was unnecessary." "They all wanted to be in it," the man answered, "for the season is bad, and there's nothing doing."