“Children, Monsieur l’Inspecteur has said that I am to be released, and I am going.”
She laid her hand on the latch of the door. One step more and she would be in the street.
Javert up to that moment had remained erect, motionless, with his eyes fixed on the ground, cast athwart this scene like some displaced statue, which is waiting to be put away somewhere.
The sound of the latch roused him. He raised his head with an expression of sovereign authority, an expression all the more alarming in proportion as the authority rests on a low level, ferocious in the wild beast, atrocious in the man of no estate.
“Sergeant!” he cried, “don’t you see that that jade is walking off! Who bade you let her go?”
“I,” said Madeleine.
Fantine trembled at the sound of Javert’s voice, and let go of the latch as a thief relinquishes the article which he has stolen. At the sound of Madeleine’s voice she turned around, and from that moment forth she uttered no word, nor dared so much as to breathe freely,