But Thénardier continued:
“Monsieur le Baron, I have the strongest of reasons for believing that the assassinated young man was an opulent stranger lured into a trap by Jean Valjean, and the bearer of an enormous sum of money.”
“The young man was myself, and here is the coat!” cried Marius, and he flung upon the floor an old black coat all covered with blood.
Then, snatching the fragment from the hands of Thénardier, he crouched down over the coat, and laid the torn morsel against the tattered skirt. The rent fitted exactly, and the strip completed the coat.
Thénardier was petrified.
This is what he thought: “I’m struck all of a heap.”
Marius rose to his feet trembling, despairing, radiant.
He fumbled in his pocket and stalked furiously to Thénardier, presenting to him and almost thrusting in his face his fist filled with banknotes for five hundred and a thousand francs.
“You are an infamous wretch! you are a liar, a calumniator, a villain. You came to accuse that man, you have only justified him; you wanted to ruin him, you have only succeeded in glorifying him. And it is you who are the thief! And it is you who are the assassin! I saw you, Thénardier Jondrette, in that lair on the Rue de l’Hôpital. I know enough about you to send you to the galleys and even further if I choose. Here are a thousand francs, bully that you are!”
And he flung a thousand franc note at Thénardier.