It was the husband and wife holding council, and then Thénardier walked slowly to the table, opened the drawer, and took out the knife. Marius clutched the handle of the pistol in a state of extraordinary perplexity. For above an hour he had heard two voices in his conscience, one telling him to respect his father's will, while the other cried to him to succor the prisoner. These two voices continued their struggle uninterruptedly, and caused him an agony. He had vaguely hoped up to this moment to find some mode of reconciling these two duties, but nothing possible had occurred to him. Still the peril pressed; the last moment of delay was passed, for Thénardier, knife in hand, was reflecting a few paces from the prisoner. Marius looked wildly around him, which is the last mechanical resource of despair. All at once he started; at his feet on his table a bright moonbeam lit up and seemed to point out to him a sheet of paper. On this sheet he read this line, written in large letters that very morning by the elder of Thénardier's daughters,--"_Here are the Slops._" An idea, a flash, crossed Marius's mind; this was the solution of the frightful problem that tortured him, sparing the assassin and saving the victim. He knelt down on the chest-of-drawers, stretched forth his arm, seized the paper, softly detached a lump of plaster from the partition, wrapped it up in the paper, and threw it through the hole into the middle of the den. It was high time, for Thénardier had overcome his last fears, or his last scruples, and was going toward the prisoner. "There's something falling," his wife cried. "What is it?" her husband asked. The woman had bounded forward, and picked up the lump of plaster wrapped in paper, which she handed to her husband. "How did it get here?" Thénardier asked. "Why, hang it!" his wife asked, "how do you expect that it did? Through the window, of course." "I saw it pass," said Bigrenaille. Thénardier rapidly unfolded the paper, and held it close to the candle. "Éponine's handwriting--The devil!" He made a signal to his wife, who hurried up to him, and showed her the line written on the paper, then added in a hollow voice,-- "Quick, the ladder! we must leave the bacon in the trap, and bolt." "Without cutting the man's throat?" the Megæra asked. "We haven't the time." "Which way?" Bigrenaille remarked. "By the window," Thénardier replied; "as Ponine threw the stone through the window, that's a proof that the house is not beset on that side."