"Halt!" he shouted; "you will not leave by the window but by the door, which is not so unhealthy. You are seven and we are fifteen, so do not let us quarrel like water-carriers, but behave like gentlemen." Bigrenaille drew a pistol from under his blouse, and placed it in Thénardier's hand, as he whispered,-- "It is Javert, and I dare not fire at that man. Dare you?" "I should think so," Thénardier answered. "Well, fire!" Thénardier took the pistol and aimed at Javert; the Inspector, who was only three paces from him, looked at him fixedly, and contented himself with saying,-- "Don't fire, for the pistol won't go off." Thénardier pulled the trigger; there was a flash in the pan. "Did I not tell you so?" Javert remarked. Bigrenaille threw his life-preserver at Javert's feet. "You are the Emperor of the devils, and I surrender." "And you?" Javert asked the other bandits. They answered, "We too." Javert remarked calmly,-- "That is all right; I begged you to behave like gentlemen." "I only ask one thing," Bigrenaille remarked,--"that my tobacco may n't be stopped while I'm in solitary confinement." "Granted," said Javert. Then he turned and shouted, "You can come in now!" A squad of police, sword in hand, and agents armed with bludgeons and sticks, rushed in at Javert's summons, and bound the robbers. This crowd of men, scarce illumined by the candle, filled the den with shadows. "Handcuff them all!" Javert cried. "Just come this way!" a voice shouted, which was not that of a man, but of which no one could have said, "It is a woman's voice." Mother Thénardier had intrenched herself in one of the angles of the window, and it was she from whom this roar had come. The police and the agents fell back; she had thrown off her shawl and kept her bonnet on: her husband, crouching behind her, almost disappeared under the fallen shawl, and she covered him with her body, while raising the paving-stone above her head with both hands, like a giantess about to heave a rock. "Heads below!" she screeched. All fell back upon the passage, and there was a large open space in the centre of the garret. The hag took a glance at the bandits, who had suffered themselves to be bound, and muttered, in a hoarse and guttural voice,--"The cowards!" Javert smiled, and walked into the open space which the woman guarded with her eyes. "Don't come nearer," she shrieked, "or I'll smash you. Be off!" "What a grenadier!" said Javert; "the mother! You have a beard like a man, but I have claws like a woman."