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THE UNPLEASANTNESS OF RECEIVING INTO ONE'S HOUSE A POOR MAN
WHO MAY BE A RICH MAN
Cosette could not refrain from casting a sidelong glance
at the big doll, which was still displayed at the toy-merchant's;
then she knocked. The door opened.
The Thenardier appeared with a candle in her hand.
"Ah! so it's you, you little wretch! good mercy, but
you've taken your time!
The hussy has been amusing herself!"
"Madame," said Cosette, trembling all over, "here's
a gentleman who wants a lodging."
The Thenardier speedily replaced her gruff air by her amiable
grimace, a change of aspect common to tavern-keepers, and eagerly
sought the new-comer with her eyes.
"This is the gentleman?" said she.
"Yes, Madame," replied the man, raising his hand
to his hat.
Wealthy travellers are not so polite.
This gesture, and an inspection of the stranger's costume
and baggage, which the Thenardier passed in review with one glance,
caused the amiable grimace to vanish, and the gruff mien to reappear.
She resumed dryly:--
"Enter, my good man."
The "good man" entered.
The Thenardier cast a second glance at him, paid particular
attention to his frock-coat, which was absolutely threadbare,
and to his hat, which was a little battered, and, tossing her
head, wrinkling her nose, and screwing up her eyes, she consulted
her husband, who was still drinking with the carters. The husband
replied by that imperceptible movement of the forefinger, which,
backed up by an inflation of the lips, signifies in such cases:
A regular beggar.
Thereupon, the Thenardier exclaimed:--
"Ah! see here, my good man; I am very sorry, but I have
no room left."
"Put me where you like," said the man; "in
the attic, in the stable. I will pay as though I occupied a room."
"Forty sous."
"Forty sous; agreed."
"Very well, then!"
"Forty sous!" said a carter, in a low tone, to the
Thenardier woman; "why, the charge is only twenty sous!"
"It is forty in his case," retorted the Thenardier,
in the same tone. "I don't lodge poor folks for less."
"That's true," added her husband, gently; "it
ruins a house to have such people in it."
In the meantime, the man, laying his bundle and his cudgel
on a bench, had seated himself at a table, on which Cosette made
haste to place a bottle of wine and a glass.
The merchant who had demanded the bucket of water took it
to his horse himself. Cosette resumed her place under the kitchen
table, and her knitting.
The man, who had barely moistened his lips in the wine which
he had poured out for himself, observed the child with peculiar
attention.
Cosette was ugly.
If she had been happy, she might have been pretty. We have
already given a sketch of that sombre little figure. Cosette was
thin and pale; she was nearly eight years old, but she seemed
to be hardly six.
Her large eyes, sunken in a sort of shadow, were almost put
out with weeping.
The corners of her mouth had that curve of habitual anguish
which is seen in condemned persons and desperately sick people.
Her hands were, as her mother had divined, "ruined with
chilblains."
The fire which illuminated her at that moment brought into
relief all the angles of her bones, and rendered her thinness
frightfully apparent.
As she was always shivering, she had acquired the habit of
pressing her knees one against the other. Her entire clothing
was but a rag which would have inspired pity in summer, and which
inspired horror in winter.
All she had on was hole-ridden linen, not a scrap of woollen.
Her skin was visible here and there and everywhere black and
blue spots could be descried, which marked the places where the
Thenardier woman had touched her. Her naked legs were thin and
red.
The hollows in her neck were enough to make one weep.
This child's whole person, her mien, her attitude, the sound
of her voice, the intervals which she allowed to elapse between
one word and the next, her glance, her silence, her slightest
gesture, expressed and betrayed one sole idea,--fear.
Fear was diffused all over her; she was covered with it, so
to speak; fear drew her elbows close to her hips, withdrew her
heels under her petticoat, made her occupy as little space as
possible, allowed her only the breath that was absolutely necessary,
and had become what might be called the habit of her body, admitting
of no possible variation except an increase.
In the depths of her eyes there was an astonished nook where
terror lurked.
Her fear was such, that on her arrival, wet as she was, Cosette
did not dare to approach the fire and dry herself, but sat silently
down to her work again.
The expression in the glance of that child of eight years
was habitually so gloomy, and at times so tragic, that it seemed
at certain moments as though she were on the verge of becoming
an idiot or a demon.
As we have stated, she had never known what it is to pray;
she had never set foot in a church.
"Have I the time?" said the Thenardier.
The man in the yellow coat never took his eyes from Cosette.
All at once, the Thenardier exclaimed:--
"By the way, where's that bread?"
Cosette, according to her custom whenever the Thenardier uplifted
her voice, emerged with great haste from beneath the table.
She had completely forgotten the bread.
She had recourse to the expedient of children who live in
a constant state of fear. She lied.
"Madame, the baker's shop was shut."
"You should have knocked."
"I did knock, Madame."
"Well?"
"He did not open the door."
"I'll find out to-morrow whether that is true,"
said the Thenardier; "and if you are telling me a lie, I'll
lead you a pretty dance. In the meantime, give me back my fifteen-sou
piece."
Cosette plunged her hand into the pocket of her apron, and
turned green. The fifteen-sou piece was not there.
"Ah, come now," said Madame Thenardier, "did
you hear me?"
Cosette turned her pocket inside out; there was nothing in
it. What could have become of that money?
The unhappy little creature could not find a word to say.
She was petrified.
"Have you lost that fifteen-sou piece?" screamed
the Thenardier, hoarsely, "or do you want to rob me of it?"
At the same time, she stretched out her arm towards the cat-o'-nine-tails
which hung on a nail in the chimney-corner.
This formidable gesture restored to Cosette sufficient strength
to shriek:--
"Mercy, Madame, Madame!
I will not do so any more!"
The Thenardier took down the whip.
In the meantime, the man in the yellow coat had been fumbling
in the fob of his waistcoat, without any one having noticed his
movements. Besides, the other travellers were drinking or playing
cards, and were not paying attention to anything.
Cosette contracted herself into a ball, with anguish, within
the angle of the chimney, endeavoring to gather up and conceal
her poor half-nude limbs.
The Thenardier raised her arm.
"Pardon me, Madame," said the man, "but just
now I caught sight of something which had fallen from this little
one's apron pocket, and rolled aside.
Perhaps this is it."
At the same time he bent down and seemed to be searching on
the floor for a moment.
"Exactly; here it is," he went on, straightening
himself up.
And he held out a silver coin to the Thenardier.
"Yes, that's it," said she.
It was not it, for it was a twenty-sou piece; but the Thenardier
found it to her advantage.
She put the coin in her pocket, and confined herself to casting
a fierce glance at the child, accompanied with the remark, "Don't
let this ever happen again!"
Cosette returned to what the Thenardier called "her kennel,"
and her large eyes, which were riveted on the traveller, began
to take on an expression such as they had never worn before. Thus
far it was only an innocent amazement, but a sort of stupefied
confidence was mingled with it.
"By the way, would you like some supper?" the Thenardier
inquired of the traveller.
He made no reply.
He appeared to be absorbed in thought.
"What sort of a man is that?" she muttered between
her teeth. "He's some frightfully poor wretch.
He hasn't a sou to pay for a supper.
Will he even pay me for his lodging?
It's very lucky, all the same, that it did not occur to him
to steal the money that was on the floor."
In the meantime, a door had opened, and Eponine and Azelma
entered.
They were two really pretty little girls, more bourgeois than
peasant in looks, and very charming; the one with shining chestnut
tresses, the other with long black braids hanging down her back,
both vivacious, neat, plump, rosy, and healthy, and a delight
to the eye.
They were warmly clad, but with so much maternal art that
the thickness of the stuffs did not detract from the coquetry
of arrangement.
There was a hint of winter, though the springtime was not
wholly effaced.
Light emanated from these two little beings. Besides this,
they were on the throne.
In their toilettes, in their gayety, in the noise which they
made, there was sovereignty. When they entered, the Thenardier
said to them in a grumbling tone which was full of adoration,
"Ah! there you are, you children!"
Then drawing them, one after the other to her knees, smoothing
their hair, tying their ribbons afresh, and then releasing them
with that gentle manner of shaking off which is peculiar to mothers,
she exclaimed, "What frights they are!"
They went and seated themselves in the chimney-corner. They
had a doll, which they turned over and over on their knees with
all sorts of joyous chatter.
From time to time Cosette raised her eyes from her knitting,
and watched their play with a melancholy air.
Eponine and Azelma did not look at Cosette.
She was the same as a dog to them.
These three little girls did not yet reckon up four and twenty
years between them, but they already represented the whole society
of man; envy on the one side, disdain on the other.
The doll of the Thenardier sisters was very much faded, very
old, and much broken; but it seemed none the less admirable to
Cosette, who had never had a doll in her life, a real doll, to
make use of the expression which all children will understand.
All at once, the Thenardier, who had been going back and forth
in the room, perceived that Cosette's mind was distracted, and
that, instead of working, she was paying attention to the little
ones at their play.
"Ah!
I've caught you at it!" she cried.
"So that's the way you work! I'll make you work to the
tune of the whip; that I will."
The stranger turned to the Thenardier, without quitting his
chair.
"Bah, Madame," he said, with an almost timid air,
"let her play!"
Such a wish expressed by a traveller who had eaten a slice
of mutton and had drunk a couple of bottles of wine with his supper,
and who had not the air of being frightfully poor, would have
been equivalent to an order.
But that a man with such a hat should permit himself such
a desire, and that a man with such a coat should permit himself
to have a will, was something which Madame Thenardier did not
intend to tolerate.
She retorted with acrimony:--
"She must work, since she eats.
I don't feed her to do nothing."
"What is she making?" went on the stranger, in a
gentle voice which contrasted strangely with his beggarly garments
and his porter's shoulders.
The Thenardier deigned to reply:--
"Stockings, if you please.
Stockings for my little girls, who have none, so to speak,
and who are absolutely barefoot just now."
The man looked at Cosette's poor little red feet, and continued:--
"When will she have finished this pair of stockings?"
"She has at least three or four good days' work on them
still, the lazy creature!"
"And how much will that pair of stockings be worth when
she has finished them?"
The Thenardier cast a glance of disdain on him.
"Thirty sous at least."
"Will you sell them for five francs?" went on the
man.
"Good heavens!" exclaimed a carter who was listening,
with a loud laugh; "five francs! the deuce, I should think
so! five balls!"
Thenardier thought it time to strike in.
"Yes, sir; if such is your fancy, you will be allowed
to have that pair of stockings for five francs.
We can refuse nothing to travellers."
"You must pay on the spot," said the Thenardier,
in her curt and peremptory fashion.
"I will buy that pair of stockings," replied the
man, "and," he added, drawing a five-franc piece from
his pocket, and laying it on the table, "I will pay for them."
Then he turned to Cosette.
"Now I own your work; play, my child."
The carter was so much touched by the five-franc piece, that
he abandoned his glass and hastened up.
"But it's true!" he cried, examining it.
"A real hind wheel! and not counterfeit!"
Thenardier approached and silently put the coin in his pocket.
The Thenardier had no reply to make.
She bit her lips, and her face assumed an expression of hatred.
In the meantime, Cosette was trembling.
She ventured to ask:--
"Is it true, Madame?
May I play?"
"Play!" said the Thenardier, in a terrible voice.
"Thanks, Madame," said Cosette.
And while her mouth thanked the Thenardier, her whole little
soul thanked the traveller.
Thenardier had resumed his drinking; his wife whispered in
his ear:--
"Who can this yellow man be?"
"I have seen millionaires with coats like that,"
replied Thenardier, in a sovereign manner.
Cosette had dropped her knitting, but had not left her seat.
Cosette always moved as little as possible.
She picked up some old rags and her little lead sword from
a box behind her.
Eponine and Azelma paid no attention to what was going on.
They had just executed a very important operation; they had just
got hold of the cat.
They had thrown their doll on the ground, and Eponine, who
was the elder, was swathing the little cat, in spite of its mewing
and its contortions, in a quantity of clothes and red and blue
scraps.
While performing this serious and difficult work she was saying
to her sister in that sweet and adorable language of children,
whose grace, like the splendor of the butterfly's wing, vanishes
when one essays to fix it fast.
"You see, sister, this doll is more amusing than the
other. She twists, she cries, she is warm.
See, sister, let us play with her. She shall be my little
girl.
I will be a lady.
I will come to see you, and you shall look at her.
Gradually, you will perceive her whiskers, and that will surprise
you.
And then you will see her ears, and then you will see her
tail and it will amaze you. And you will say to me, `Ah! Mon Dieu!'
and I will say to you: `Yes, Madame, it is my little girl.
Little girls are made like that just at present.'"
Azelma listened admiringly to Eponine.
In the meantime, the drinkers had begun to sing an obscene
song, and to laugh at it until the ceiling shook.
Thenardier accompanied and encouraged them.
As birds make nests out of everything, so children make a
doll out of anything which comes to hand.
While Eponine and Azelma were bundling up the cat, Cosette,
on her side, had dressed up her sword. That done, she laid it
in her arms, and sang to it softly, to lull it to sleep.
The doll is one of the most imperious needs and, at the same
time, one of the most charming instincts of feminine childhood.
To care for, to clothe, to deck, to dress, to undress, to redress,
to teach, scold a little, to rock, to dandle, to lull to sleep,
to imagine that something is some one,--therein lies the whole
woman's future.
While dreaming and chattering, making tiny outfits, and baby
clothes, while sewing little gowns, and corsages and bodices,
the child grows into a young girl, the young girl into a big girl,
the big girl into a woman.
The first child is the continuation of the last doll.
A little girl without a doll is almost as unhappy, and quite
as impossible, as a woman without children.
So Cosette had made herself a doll out of the sword.
Madame Thenardier approached the yellow man; "My husband
is right," she thought; "perhaps it is M. Laffitte;
there are such queer rich men!"
She came and set her elbows on the table.
"Monsieur," said she.
At this word, Monsieur, the man turned; up to that time, the
Thenardier had addressed him only as brave homme or bonhomme.
"You see, sir," she pursued, assuming a sweetish
air that was even more repulsive to behold than her fierce mien,
"I am willing that the child should play; I do not oppose
it, but it is good for once, because you are generous.
You see, she has nothing; she must needs work."
"Then this child is not yours?" demanded the man.
"Oh! mon Dieu! no, sir! she is a little beggar whom we
have taken in through charity; a sort of imbecile child.
She must have water on the brain; she has a large head, as
you see.
We do what we can for her, for we are not rich; we have written
in vain to her native place, and have received no reply these
six months. It must be that her mother is dead."
"Ah!" said the man, and fell into his revery once
more.
"Her mother didn't amount to much," added the Thenardier;
"she abandoned her child."
During the whole of this conversation Cosette, as though warned
by some instinct that she was under discussion, had not taken
her eyes from the Thenardier's face; she listened vaguely; she
caught a few words here and there.
Meanwhile, the drinkers, all three-quarters intoxicated, were
repeating their unclean refrain with redoubled gayety; it was
a highly spiced and wanton song, in which the Virgin and the infant
Jesus were introduced.
The Thenardier went off to take part in the shouts of laughter.
Cosette, from her post under the table, gazed at the fire,
which was reflected from her fixed eyes.
She had begun to rock the sort of baby which she had made,
and, as she rocked it, she sang in a low voice, "My mother
is dead! my mother is dead! my mother is dead!"
On being urged afresh by the hostess, the yellow man, "the
millionaire," consented at last to take supper.
"What does Monsieur wish?"
"Bread and cheese," said the man.
"Decidedly, he is a beggar" thought Madame Thenardier.
The drunken men were still singing their song, and the child
under the table was singing hers.
All at once, Cosette paused; she had just turned round and
caught sight of the little Thenardiers' doll, which they had abandoned
for the cat and had left on the floor a few paces from the kitchen
table.
Then she dropped the swaddled sword, which only half met her
needs, and cast her eyes slowly round the room.
Madame Thenardier was whispering to her husband and counting
over some money; Ponine and Zelma were playing with the cat; the
travellers were eating or drinking or singing; not a glance was
fixed on her. She had not a moment to lose; she crept out from
under the table on her hands and knees, made sure once more that
no one was watching her; then she slipped quickly up to the doll
and seized it.
An instant later she was in her place again, seated motionless,
and only turned so as to cast a shadow on the doll which she held
in her arms. The happiness of playing with a doll was so rare
for her that it contained all the violence of voluptuousness.
No one had seen her, except the traveller, who was slowly
devouring his meagre supper.
This joy lasted about a quarter of an hour.
But with all the precautions that Cosette had taken she did
not perceive that one of the doll's legs stuck out and that the
fire on the hearth lighted it up very vividly.
That pink and shining foot, projecting from the shadow, suddenly
struck the eye of Azelma, who said to Eponine, "Look! sister."
The two little girls paused in stupefaction; Cosette had dared
to take their doll!
Eponine rose, and, without releasing the cat, she ran to her
mother, and began to tug at her skirt.
"Let me alone!" said her mother; "what do you
want?"
"Mother," said the child, "look there!"
And she pointed to Cosette.
Cosette, absorbed in the ecstasies of possession, no longer
saw or heard anything.
Madame Thenardier's countenance assumed that peculiar expression
which is composed of the terrible mingled with the trifles of
life, and which has caused this style of woman to be named megaeras.
On this occasion, wounded pride exasperated her wrath still
further. Cosette had overstepped all bounds; Cosette had laid
violent hands on the doll belonging to "these young ladies."
A czarina who should see a muzhik trying on her imperial son's
blue ribbon would wear no other face.
She shrieked in a voice rendered hoarse with indignation:--
"Cosette!"
Cosette started as though the earth had trembled beneath her;
she turned round.
"Cosette!" repeated the Thenardier.
Cosette took the doll and laid it gently on the floor with
a sort of veneration, mingled with despair; then, without taking
her eyes from it, she clasped her hands, and, what is terrible
to relate of a child of that age, she wrung them; then--not one
of the emotions of the day, neither the trip to the forest, nor
the weight of the bucket of water, nor the loss of the money,
nor the sight of the whip, nor even the sad words which she had
heard Madame Thenardier utter had been able to wring this from
her-- she wept; she burst out sobbing.
Meanwhile, the traveller had risen to his feet.
"What is the matter?" he said to the Thenardier.
"Don't you see?" said the Thenardier, pointing to
the corpus delicti which lay at Cosette's feet.
"Well, what of it?" resumed the man.
"That beggar," replied the Thenardier, "has
permitted herself to touch the children's doll!"
"All this noise for that!" said the man; "well,
what if she did play with that doll?"
"She touched it with her dirty hands!" pursued the
Thenardier, "with her frightful hands!"
Here Cosette redoubled her sobs.
"Will you stop your noise?" screamed the Thenardier.
The man went straight to the street door, opened it, and stepped
out.
As soon as he had gone, the Thenardier profited by his absence
to give Cosette a hearty kick under the table, which made the
child utter loud cries.
The door opened again, the man re-appeared; he carried in
both hands the fabulous doll which we have mentioned, and which
all the village brats had been staring at ever since the morning,
and he set it upright in front of Cosette, saying:--
"Here; this is for you."
It must be supposed that in the course of the hour and more
which he had spent there he had taken confused notice through
his revery of that toy shop, lighted up by fire-pots and candles
so splendidly that it was visible like an illumination through
the window of the drinking-shop.
Cosette raised her eyes; she gazed at the man approaching
her with that doll as she might have gazed at the sun; she heard
the unprecedented words, "It is for you"; she stared
at him; she stared at the doll; then she slowly retreated, and
hid herself at the extreme end, under the table in a corner of
the wall.
She no longer cried; she no longer wept; she had the appearance
of no longer daring to breathe.
The Thenardier, Eponine, and Azelma were like statues also;
the very drinkers had paused; a solemn silence reigned through
the whole room.
Madame Thenardier, petrified and mute, recommenced her conjectures:
"Who is that old fellow?
Is he a poor man?
Is he a millionaire? Perhaps he is both; that is to say, a
thief."
The face of the male Thenardier presented that expressive
fold which accentuates the human countenance whenever the dominant
instinct appears there in all its bestial force.
The tavern-keeper stared alternately at the doll and at the
traveller; he seemed to be scenting out the man, as he would have
scented out a bag of money. This did not last longer than the
space of a flash of lightning. He stepped up to his wife and said
to her in a low voice:--
"That machine costs at least thirty francs.
No nonsense. Down on your belly before that man!"
Gross natures have this in common with naive natures, that
they possess no transition state.
"Well, Cosette," said the Thenardier, in a voice
that strove to be sweet, and which was composed of the bitter
honey of malicious women, "aren't you going to take your
doll?"
Cosette ventured to emerge from her hole.
"The gentleman has given you a doll, my little Cosette,"
said Thenardier, with a caressing air.
"Take it; it is yours."
Cosette gazed at the marvellous doll in a sort of terror.
Her face was still flooded with tears, but her eyes began to fill,
like the sky at daybreak, with strange beams of joy.
What she felt at that moment was a little like what she would
have felt if she had been abruptly told, "Little one, you
are the Queen of France."
It seemed to her that if she touched that doll, lightning
would dart from it.
This was true, up to a certain point, for she said to herself
that the Thenardier would scold and beat her.
Nevertheless, the attraction carried the day.
She ended by drawing near and murmuring timidly as she turned
towards Madame Thenardier:--
"May I, Madame?"
No words can render that air, at once despairing, terrified,
and ecstatic.
"Pardi!" cried the Thenardier, "it is yours.
The gentleman has given it to you."
"Truly, sir?" said Cosette.
"Is it true?
Is the `lady' mine?"
The stranger's eyes seemed to be full of tears.
He appeared to have reached that point of emotion where a
man does not speak for fear lest he should weep.
He nodded to Cosette, and placed the "lady's" hand
in her tiny hand.
Cosette hastily withdrew her hand, as though that of the "lady"
scorched her, and began to stare at the floor.
We are forced to add that at that moment she stuck out her
tongue immoderately. All at once she wheeled round and seized
the doll in a transport.
"I shall call her Catherine," she said.
It was an odd moment when Cosette's rags met and clasped the
ribbons and fresh pink muslins of the doll.
"Madame," she resumed, "may I put her on a
chair?"
"Yes, my child," replied the Thenardier.
It was now the turn of Eponine and Azelma to gaze at Cosette
with envy.
Cosette placed Catherine on a chair, then seated herself on
the floor in front of her, and remained motionless, without uttering
a word, in an attitude of contemplation.
"Play, Cosette," said the stranger.
"Oh!
I am playing," returned the child.
This stranger, this unknown individual, who had the air of
a visit which Providence was making on Cosette, was the person
whom the Thenardier hated worse than any one in the world at that
moment.
However, it was necessary to control herself. Habituated as
she was to dissimulation through endeavoring to copy her husband
in all his actions, these emotions were more than she could endure.
She made haste to send her daughters to bed, then she asked
the man's permission to send Cosette off also; "for she has
worked hard all day," she added with a maternal air. Cosette
went off to bed, carrying Catherine in her arms.
From time to time the Thenardier went to the other end of
the room where her husband was, to relieve her soul, as she said.
She exchanged with her husband words which were all the more furious
because she dared not utter them aloud.
"Old beast!
What has he got in his belly, to come and upset us in this
manner!
To want that little monster to play! to give away forty-franc
dolls to a jade that I would sell for forty sous, so I would!
A little more and he will be saying Your Majesty to her, as
though to the Duchess de Berry!
Is there any sense in it? Is he mad, then, that mysterious
old fellow?"
"Why! it is perfectly simple," replied Thenardier,
"if that amuses him! It amuses you to have the little one
work; it amuses him to have her play.
He's all right.
A traveller can do what he pleases when he pays for it.
If the old fellow is a philanthropist, what is that to you?
If he is an imbecile, it does not concern you. What are you
worrying for, so long as he has money?"
The language of a master, and the reasoning of an innkeeper,
neither of which admitted of any reply.
The man had placed his elbows on the table, and resumed his
thoughtful attitude.
All the other travellers, both pedlers and carters, had withdrawn
a little, and had ceased singing. They were staring at him from
a distance, with a sort of respectful awe. This poorly dressed
man, who drew "hind-wheels" from his pocket with so
much ease, and who lavished gigantic dolls on dirty little brats
in wooden shoes, was certainly a magnificent fellow, and one to
be feared.
Many hours passed.
The midnight mass was over, the chimes had ceased, the drinkers
had taken their departure, the drinking-shop was closed, the public
room was deserted, the fire extinct, the stranger still remained
in the same place and the same attitude.
From time to time he changed the elbow on which he leaned.
That was all; but he had not said a word since Cosette had
left the room.
The Thenardiers alone, out of politeness and curiosity, had
remained in the room.
"Is he going to pass the night in that fashion?"
grumbled the Thenardier. When two o'clock in the morning struck,
she declared herself vanquished, and said to her husband, "I'm
going to bed.
Do as you like." Her husband seated himself at a table
in the corner, lighted a candle, and began to read the Courrier
Francais.
A good hour passed thus.
The worthy inn-keeper had perused the Courrier Francais at
least three times, from the date of the number to the printer's
name.
The stranger did not stir.
Thenardier fidgeted, coughed, spit, blew his nose, and creaked
his chair.
Not a movement on the man's part.
"Is he asleep?" thought Thenardier.
The man was not asleep, but nothing could arouse him.
At last Thenardier took off his cap, stepped gently up to
him, and ventured to say:--
"Is not Monsieur going to his repose?"
Not going to bed would have seemed to him excessive and familiar.
To repose smacked of luxury and respect.
These words possess the mysterious and admirable property
of swelling the bill on the following day.
A chamber where one sleeps costs twenty sous; a chamber in
which one reposes costs twenty francs.
"Well!" said the stranger, "you are right.
Where is your stable?"
"Sir!" exclaimed Thenardier, with a smile, "I
will conduct you, sir."
He took the candle; the man picked up his bundle and cudgel,
and Thenardier conducted him to a chamber on the first floor,
which was of rare splendor, all furnished in mahogany, with a
low bedstead, curtained with red calico.
"What is this?" said the traveller.
"It is really our bridal chamber," said the tavern-keeper.
"My wife and I occupy another.
This is only entered three or four times a year."
"I should have liked the stable quite as well,"
said the man, abruptly.
Thenardier pretended not to hear this unamiable remark.
He lighted two perfectly fresh wax candles which figured on
the chimney-piece. A very good fire was flickering on the hearth.
On the chimney-piece, under a glass globe, stood a woman's
head-dress in silver wire and orange flowers.
"And what is this?" resumed the stranger.
"That, sir," said Thenardier, "is my wife's
wedding bonnet."
The traveller surveyed the object with a glance which seemed
to say, "There really was a time, then, when that monster
was a maiden?"
Thenardier lied, however.
When he had leased this paltry building for the purpose of
converting it into a tavern, he had found this chamber decorated
in just this manner, and had purchased the furniture and obtained
the orange flowers at second hand, with the idea that this would
cast a graceful shadow on "his spouse," and would result
in what the English call respectability for his house.
When the traveller turned round, the host had disappeared.
Thenardier had withdrawn discreetly, without venturing to wish
him a good night, as he did not wish to treat with disrespectful
cordiality a man whom he proposed to fleece royally the following
morning.
The inn-keeper retired to his room.
His wife was in bed, but she was not asleep.
When she heard her husband's step she turned over and said
to him:--
"Do you know, I'm going to turn Cosette out of doors
to-morrow."
Thenardier replied coldly:--
"How you do go on!"
They exchanged no further words, and a few moments later their
candle was extinguished.
As for the traveller, he had deposited his cudgel and his
bundle in a corner.
The landlord once gone, he threw himself into an arm-chair
and remained for some time buried in thought. Then he removed
his shoes, took one of the two candles, blew out the other, opened
the door, and quitted the room, gazing about him like a person
who is in search of something. He traversed a corridor and came
upon a staircase.
There he heard a very faint and gentle sound like the breathing
of a child. He followed this sound, and came to a sort of triangular
recess built under the staircase, or rather formed by the staircase
itself. This recess was nothing else than the space under the
steps. There, in the midst of all sorts of old papers and potsherds,
among dust and spiders' webs, was a bed--if one can call by the
name of bed a straw pallet so full of holes as to display the
straw, and a coverlet so tattered as to show the pallet.
No sheets. This was placed on the floor.
In this bed Cosette was sleeping.
The man approached and gazed down upon her.
Cosette was in a profound sleep; she was fully dressed.
In the winter she did not undress, in order that she might
not be so cold.
Against her breast was pressed the doll, whose large eyes,
wide open, glittered in the dark.
From time to time she gave vent to a deep sigh as though she
were on the point of waking, and she strained the doll almost
convulsively in her arms.
Beside her bed there was only one of her wooden shoes.
A door which stood open near Cosette's pallet permitted a
view of a rather large, dark room.
The stranger stepped into it. At the further extremity, through
a glass door, he saw two small, very white beds.
They belonged to Eponine and Azelma. Behind these beds, and
half hidden, stood an uncurtained wicker cradle, in which the
little boy who had cried all the evening lay asleep.
The stranger conjectured that this chamber connected with
that of the Thenardier pair.
He was on the point of retreating when his eye fell upon the
fireplace--one of those vast tavern chimneys where there is always
so little fire when there is any fire at all, and which are so
cold to look at.
There was no fire in this one, there was not even ashes; but
there was something which attracted the stranger's gaze, nevertheless.
It was two tiny children's shoes, coquettish in shape and
unequal in size.
The traveller recalled the graceful and immemorial custom
in accordance with which children place their shoes in the chimney
on Christmas eve, there to await in the darkness some sparkling
gift from their good fairy. Eponine and Azelma had taken care
not to omit this, and each of them had set one of her shoes on
the hearth.
The traveller bent over them.
The fairy, that is to say, their mother, had already paid
her visit, and in each he saw a brand-new and shining ten-sou
piece.
The man straightened himself up, and was on the point of withdrawing,
when far in, in the darkest corner of the hearth, he caught sight
of another object.
He looked at it, and recognized a wooden shoe, a frightful
shoe of the coarsest description, half dilapidated and all covered
with ashes and dried mud.
It was Cosette's sabot. Cosette, with that touching trust
of childhood, which can always be deceived yet never discouraged,
had placed her shoe on the hearth-stone also.
Hope in a child who has never known anything but despair is
a sweet and touching thing.
There was nothing in this wooden shoe.
The stranger fumbled in his waistcoat, bent over and placed
a louis d'or in Cosette's shoe.
Then he regained his own chamber with the stealthy tread of
a wolf.
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