Thenardier and the Thenardiess

At the battle of Waterloo, Thenardier was stealing from bodies, when a hand grabs his. Thenardier pulls the man out of the pile of people. Before the man gains consciousness, Thenardier robs him. When he does wake up, the man identifies himself as Colonel Pontmercy, and promises that he or his son will repay Thenardier someday.

(in the year 1823) Thenardier had just passed his fiftieth birthday; Madame Thenardier was approaching her forties, which is equivalent to fifty in a woman; so that there existed a balance of age between husband and wife.
...Thenardier woman...—tall, blond, red, fat, angular, square, enormous, and agile; she belonged, as we have said, to the race of those colossal wild women, who contort themselves at fairs with paving-stones hanging from their hair. She did everything about the house,—made the beds, did the washing, the cooking, and everything else. ... Everything trembled at the sound of her voice,—window panes, furniture, and people. Her big face, dotted with red blotches, presented the appearance of a skimmer. She had a beard. She was an ideal market-porter dressed in woman's clothes. She swore splendidly; she boasted of being able to crack a nut with one blow of her fist. Except for the romances which she had read, and which made the affected lady peep through the ogress at times, in a very queer way, the idea would never have occurred to any one to say of her, "That is a woman." This Thenardier female was like the product of a wench engrafted on a fishwife. When one heard her speak, one said, "That is a gendarme"; when one saw her drink, one said, "That is a carter"; when one saw her handle Cosette, one said, "That is the hangman." One of her teeth projected when her face was in repose.
Thenardier was a small, thin, pale, angular, bony, feeble man, who had a sickly air and who was wonderfully healthy. His cunning began here; he smiled habitually, by way of precaution, and was almost polite to everybody, even to the beggar to whom he refused half a farthing. He had the glance of a pole-cat and the bearing of a man of letters. ... No one had ever succeeded in rendering him drunk. He smoked a big pipe. He wore a blouse, and under his blouse an old black coat. He made pretensions to literature and to materialism. ... In addition, he was a great swindler. A filousophe [philosopher], a scientific thief. The species does exist. It will be remembered that he pretended to have served in the army...
...Ebb and flow, wandering, adventure, was the leven of his existence; a tattered conscience entails a fragmentary life, and, apparently at the stormy epoch of June 18, 1815, Thenardier belonged to that variety of marauding sutlers of which we have spoken, beating about the country, selling to some, stealing from others, and travelling like a family man, with wife and children, in a rickety cart, in the rear of troops on the march, with an instinct for always attaching himself to the victorious army. This campaign ended, and having, as he said, "some quibus," he had come to Montfermeil and set up an inn there.
...He was a fine talker. He allowed it to be thought that he was an educated man. Nevertheless, the schoolmaster had noticed that he pronounced improperly.12... Thenardier was cunning, greedy, slothful, and clever. He did not disdain his servants, which caused his wife to dispense with them. This giantess was jealous. It seemed to her that that thin and yellow little man must be an object coveted by all.
Thenardier, who was, above all, an astute and well-balanced man, was a scamp of a temperate sort. This is the worst species; hypocrisy enters into it.
It is not that Thenardier was not, on occasion, capable of wrath to quite the same degree as his wife; but this was very rare, and ...when all this leaven was stirred up in him and boiled forth from his mouth and eyes, he was terrible. Woe to the person who came under his wrath at such a time!
In addition to his other qualities, Thenardier was attentive and penetrating, silent or talkative, according to circumstances, and always highly intelligent. He had something of the look of sailors, who are accustomed to screw up their eyes to gaze through marine glasses. Thenardier was a statesman.
Every new-comer who entered the tavern said, on catching sight of Madame Thenardier, "There is the master of the house." A mistake. She was not even the mistress. The husband was both master and mistress. She worked; he created. He directed everything by a sort of invisible and constant magnetic action. A word was sufficient for him, sometimes a sign; the mastodon obeyed. Thenardier was a sort of special and sovereign being in Madame Thenardier's eyes, though she did not thoroughly realize it. She was possessed of virtues after her own kind; if she had ever had a disagreement as to any detail with "Monsieur Thenardier,"—which was an inadmissible hypothesis, by the way,—she would not have blamed her husband in public on any subject whatever. ... That mountain of noise and of flesh moved under the little finger of that frail despot. Viewed on its dwarfed and grotesque side, this was that grand and universal thing, the adoration of mind by matter; for certain ugly features have a cause in the very depths of eternal beauty. There was an unknown quantity about Thenardier; hence the absolute empire of the man over that woman. At certain moments she beheld him like a lighted candle; at others she felt him like a claw.
This woman was a formidable creature who loved no one except her children, and who did not fear any one except her husband. She was a mother because she was mammiferous. But her maternity stopped short with her daughters, and, as we shall see, did not extend to boys. The man had but one thought,—how to enrich himself.
He did not succeed in this... In this same year, 1823, Thenardier was burdened with about fifteen hundred francs' worth of petty debts, and this rendered him anxious.Whatever may have been the obstinate injustice of destiny in this case, Thenardier was one of those men who understand best, with the most profundity and in the most modern fashion, that thing which is a virtue among barbarous peoples and an object of merchandise among civilized peoples,—hospitality. Besides, he was an admirable poacher, and quoted for his skill in shooting. He had a certain cold and tranquil laugh, which was particularly dangerous.
His theories as a landlord sometimes burst forth in lightning flashes. He had professional aphorisms, which he inserted into his wife's mind. "The duty of the inn-keeper," he said to her one day, violently, and in a low voice, "is to sell to the first comer, stews, repose, light, fire, dirty sheets, a servant, lice, and a smile; to stop passers-by, to empty small purses, and to honestly lighten heavy ones; to shelter travelling families respectfully: to shave the man, to pluck the woman, to pick the child clean; to quote the window open, the window shut, the chimney-corner, the arm-chair, the chair, the ottoman, the stool, the feather-bed, the mattress and the truss of straw; to know how much the shadow uses up the mirror, and to put a price on it; and, by five hundred thousand devils, to make the traveller pay for everything, even for the flies which his dog eats!"
This man and this woman were ruse and rage wedded—a hideous and terrible team.
While the husband pondered and combined, Madame Thenardier thought not of absent creditors, took no heed of yesterday nor of to-morrow, and lived in a fit of anger, all in a minute.
Such were these two beings.
(Part 2, Book 3, Chapter 2)

After relinquishing Cosette to Jean Valjean, the inn fails and the family moves to Paris, where they kick out Gavroche (who is their son). Thenardiess has two other sons whom she gives to Magnon (see Magnon).
Thenardier survives by scamming rich people. In an effort to scam a 'benevolent gentleman' he recognizes Jean Valjean, and plants an ambush, but is upset by Marius and Javert. Thenardier, Thenardiess, Eponine, and Azelma are all put in different prisons. Eponine and Azelma are released and Thenardier escapes, but the Thenardiess dies in prison.
Thenardier had heard of a wealthy recluse while in prison and sent Eponine to check it out. She'd sent back a biscuit, which meant it wasn't worth it. However, once he was free, Thenardier decided to rob it anyway.
He gathered together his buddies, but when they got to the house Eponine drove them away.
On the night of the fall of the barricades, Javert is following Thenardier around. Thenardier notices him, and to escape goes into the sewer, but Javert simply waits outside. There, Thenardier sees Jean Valjean carrying a corpse (which is actually Marius). Tearing off a piece of Marius's jacket, Thenardier pretends to be helping Jean Valjean when he lets him out of the sewer with his key. His real goal, however, is to use Jean Valjean to get Javert to leave. It works, and Thenardier leaves.
A few months later, as Thenardier and Azelma are riding in a carriage, the stop beside another carriage, which happens to be carrying Jean Valjean and Cosette on their way to the wedding. After doing some research through different magazines, Thenardier prepares to blackmail Marius.
He introduces himself as Baron Thenard, and says his has some information concerning M. Fauchelevent (the name Jean Valjean is using). However, Marius already knows the basic information Thenardier gives him, as Jean Valjean himself had confessed to Marius.
But Marius had assumed that Jean Valjean had robbed M. Madeline and killed Javert. Thenardier proved (through the newspapers) that Jean Valjean had done neither of these things. "But..." Thenardier tells Marius that he saw Jean Valjean with a corpse in the sewer on the night of the fall of the barricade. As proof, he furnishes the piece of cloth. Overjoyed, Marius recognizes it, and knows that it was Jean Valjean who'd rescued him.
Angry with Thenardier's deception, Marius still gives him an enormous sum of money on the condition that he goes to America, thus fulfilling his father's debt.
Thenardier takes Azelma to America, and there becomes a slave trader.