8
INCONVENIENCE OF ENTERTAINING A POOR MAN WHO IS PERHAPS RICH
COSETTE could not help casting one look towards the grand doll still displayed in the toy-shop, then she rapped. The door opened. The Thénardiess appeared with a candle in her hand.
“Oh! it is you, you little beggar! Lud-a-massy! you have taken your time! she has been playing, the wench!”
“Madame,” said Cosette, trembling, “there is a gentleman who is coming to lodge.”
The Thénardiess very quickly replaced her fierce air by her amiable grimace, a visible change peculiar to innkeepers, and looked for the new-comer with eager eyes.
“Is it monsieur?” said she.
“Yes, madame,” answered the man, touching his hat.
Rich travellers are not so polite. This gesture and the sight of the stranger’s costume and baggage which the Thénardiess passed in review at a glance made the amiable grimace disappear and the fierce air reappear. She added drily:
“Enter, goodman.”
The “goodman” entered. The Thénardiess cast a second glance at him, examined particularly his long coat which was absolutely threadbare, and his hat which was somewhat broken, and with a nod, a wink, and a turn of her nose, consulted her husband, who was still drinking with the waggoners. The husband answered by that imperceptible shake of the forefinger which, supported by a protrusion of the lips, signifies in such a case: “complete destitution.” Upon this the Thénardiess exclaimed:
“Ah! my brave man, I am very sorry, but I have no room.”
“Put me where you will,” said the man, “in the garret, in the stable. I will pay as if I had a room.”
“Forty sous.”
“Forty sous. Very well.”
“In advance.”
“Forty sous,” whispered a waggoner to the Thénardiess, “but it is only twenty sous.”
“It is forty sous for him,” replied the Thénardiess in the same tone. “I don’t lodge poor people for less.”
“That is true,” added her husband softly, “it ruins a house to have this sort of people.”
Meanwhile the man, after leaving his stick and bundle on a bench, had seated himself at a table on which Cosette had been quick to place a bottle of wine and a glass. The pedlar, who had asked for the bucket of water, had gone himself to carry it to his horse. Cosette had resumed her place under the kitchen table and her knitting.
The man, who hardly touched his lips to the wine he had poured for himself, was contemplating the child with a strange attentiveness.
Cosette was ugly. Happy, she might, perhaps, have been pretty. We have already sketched this little pitiful face. Cosette was thin and pale; she was nearly eight years old, but one would hardly have thought her six. Her large eyes, sunk in a sort of shadow, were almost completely dulled by continual weeping. The corners of her mouth had that curve of habitual anguish, which is seen in the condemned and in the hopelessly sick. Her hands were, as her mother had guessed, “covered with chilblains.” The light of the fire which was shining upon her, made her bones stand out and rendered her thinness fearfully visible. As she was always shivering, she had acquired the habit of drawing her knees together. Her whole dress was nothing but a rag, which would have excited pity in the summer, and which excited horror in the winter. She had on nothing but cotton, and that full of holes; not a rag of woollen. Her skin showed here and there, and black and blue spots could be distinguished, which indicated the places where the Thénardiess had touched her. Her naked legs were red and rough. The hollows under her collar bones would make one weep. The whole person of this child, her gait, her attitude, the sound of her voice, the intervals between one word and another, her looks, her silence, her least motion, expressed and uttered a single idea: fear.
Fear was spread all over her; she was, so to say, covered with it; fear drew back her elbows against her sides, drew her heels under her skirt, made her take the least possible room, prevented her from breathing more than was absolutely necessary, and had become what might be called her bodily habit, without possible variation, except of increase. There was in the depth of her eye an expression of astonishment mingled with terror.
This fear was such that on coming in, all wet as she was, Cosette had not dared go and dry herself by the fire, but had gone silently to her work.
The expression of the countenance of this child of eight years was habitually so sad and sometimes so tragical that it seemed, at certain moments, as if she were in the way of becoming an idiot or a demon.
Never, as we have said, had she known what it is to pray, never had she set foot within a church. “How can I spare the time?” said the Thénardiess.
The man in the yellow coat did not take his eyes from Cosette.
Suddenly, the Thénardiess exclaimed out:
“Oh! I forgot! that bread!”
Cosette, according to her custom whenever the Thénardiess raised her voice, sprang out quickly from under the table.
She had entirely forgotten the bread. She had recourse to the expedient of children who are always terrified. She lied.
“Madame, the baker was shut.”
“You ought to have knocked.”
“I did knock, madame.”
“Well?”
“He didn’t open.”
“I’ll find out to-morrow if that is true,” said the Thénardiess, “and if you are lying you will lead a pretty dance. Meantime give me back the fifteen-sous coin.”
Cosette plunged her hand into her apron pocket, and turned white. The fifteen-sous coin was not there.
“Come,” said the Thénardiess, “didn’t you hear me?”
Cosette turned her pocket inside out; there was nothing there. What could have become of that money? The little unfortunate could not utter a word. She was petrified.
“Have you lost it, the fifteen-sous coin?” screamed the Thénardiess, “or do you want to steal it from me?”
At the same time she reached her arm towards the cowhide hanging in the chimney corner.
This menacing movement gave Cosette the strength to cry out:
“Forgive me! Madame! Madame! I won’t do so any more!”
The Thénardiess took down the whip.
Meanwhile the man in the yellow coat had been fumbling in his waistcoat pocket, without being noticed. The other travellers were drinking or playing cards, and paid no attention to anything.
Cosette was writhing with anguish in the chimney-corner, trying to gather up and hide her poor half-naked limbs. The Thénardiess raised her arm.
“I beg your pardon, madame,” said the man, “but I just now saw something fall out of the pocket of that little girl’s apron and roll away. That may be it.”
At the same time he stooped down and appeared to search on the floor for an instant.
“Just so, here it is,” said he, rising.
And he handed a silver coin to the Thénardiess.
“Yes, that is it,” said she.
That was not it, for it was a twenty-sous coin, but the Thénardiess found her profit in it. She put the coin in her pocket, and contented herself with casting a ferocious look at the child and saying:
“Don’t let that happen again, ever.”
Cosette went back to what the Thénardiess called “her hole,” and her large eye, fixed upon the unknown traveller, began to assume an expression that it had never known before. It was still only an artless astonishment, but a sort of blind confidence was associated with it.
“O! you want supper?” asked the Thénardiess of the traveller.
He did not answer. He seemed to be thinking deeply.
“What is that man?” said she between her teeth. “It is some frightful pauper. He hasn’t a penny for his supper. Is he going to pay me for his lodging only? It is very lucky, anyway, that he didn’t think to steal the money that was on the floor.”
A door now opened, and Eponine and Azelma came in.
They were really two pretty little girls, rather city girls than peasants, very charming, one with her well-polished auburn tresses, the other with her long black braids falling down her back and both so lively, neat, plump, fresh, and healthy, that it was a pleasure to see them. They were warmly clad, but with such maternal art, that the thickness of the stuff detracted nothing from the coquetry of the fit. Winter was provided against without effacing spring. These two little girls shed light around them. Moreover, they reigned. In their toilet, in their gaiety, in the noise they made, there was sovereignty. When they entered, the Thénardiess said to them in a scolding tone, which was full of adoration: “Ah! you are here then, you children!”
Then, taking them upon her knees one after the other, smoothing their hair, tying over their ribbons, and finally letting them go with that gentle sort of shake which is peculiar to mothers, she exclaimed:
“Are they dowdies!”
They went and sat down by the fire. They had a doll which they turned backwards and forwards upon their knees with many pretty prattlings. From time to time, Cosette raised her eyes from her knitting, and looked sadly at them as they were playing.
Eponine and Azelma did not notice Cosette. To them she was like the dog. These three little girls could not count twenty-four years among them all, and they already represented all human society; on one side envy, on the other disdain.
The doll of the Thénardier sisters was very much faded, and very old and broken; and it appeared none the less wonderful to Cosette, who had never in her life had a doll, a real doll, to use an expression that all children will understand.
All at once, the Thénardiess, who was continually going and coming about the room, noticed that Cosette’s attention was distracted, and that instead of working she was watching the little girls who were playing.
“Ah! I’ve caught you!” cried she. “That is the way you work! I’ll make you work with the strap, I will.”
The stranger, without leaving his chair, turned towards the Thénardiess.
“Madame,” said he, smiling diffidently. “Pshaw! let her play!”
On the part of any traveller who had eaten a slice of mutton, and drunk two bottles of wine at his supper, and who had not had the appearance of a horrid pauper, such a wish would have been a command. But that a man who wore that hat should allow himself to have a desire, and that a man who wore that coat should permit himself to have a wish, was what the Thénardiess thought ought not to be tolerated. She replied sharply:
“She must work, for she eats. I don’t support her to do nothing.”
“What is it she is making?” said the stranger, in that gentle voice which contrasted so strangely with his beggar’s clothes and his porter’s shoulders.
The Thénardiess deigned to answer.
“Stockings, if you please. Stockings for my little girls who have none, worth speaking of, and will soon be going barefooted.”
The man looked at Cosette’s poor red feet, and continued:
“When will she finish that pair of stockings?”
“It will take her at least three or four good days, the lazy thing.”
“And how much might this pair of stockings be worth, when it is finished?”
The Thénardiess cast a disdained glance at him.
“At least thirty sous.”
“Would you take five francs for them?” said the man.
“Goodness!” exclaimed a waggoner who was listening, with a horse-laugh, “five francs? It’s a humbug! five bullets!”
Thénardier now thought it time to speak. “Yes, monsieur, if it is your fancy, you can have that pair of stockings for five francs. We can’t refuse anything to travellers.”
“You must pay for them now,” said the Thénardiess, in her short and peremptory way.
“I will buy that pair of stockings,” answered the man, “and,” added he, drawing a five-franc coin from his pocket and laying it on the table, “I will pay for them.”
Then he turned towards Cosette.
“Now your work belongs to me. Play, my child.”
The waggoner was so affected by the five-franc coin, that he left his glass and went to look at it.
“It’s so, that’s a fact!” cried he, as he looked at it. “A regular hindwheel! and no counterfeit!”
Thénardier approached, and silently put the coin in his pocket.
The Thénardiess had nothing to reply. She bit her lips, and her face assumed an expression of hatred.
Meanwhile Cosette trembled. She ventured to ask:
“Madame, is it true? can I play?”
“Play!” said the Thénardiess in a terrible voice.
“Thank you, madame,” said Cosette. And, while her mouth thanked the Thénardiess, all her little soul was thanking the traveller.
Thénardier returned to his drink. His wife whispered in his ear:
“What can that yellow man be?”
“I have seen,” answered Thénardier, in a commanding tone, “millionaires with coats like-that.”
Cosette had left her knitting, but she had not moved from her place. Cosette always stirred as little as was possible. She had taken from a little box behind her a few old rags, and her little lead sword.
Eponine and Azelma paid no attention to what was going on. They had just performed a very important operation; they had caught the kitten. They had thrown the doll on the floor, and Eponine, the elder, was dressing the kitten, in spite of her mewings and contortions, with a lot of clothes and red and blue rags. While she was engaged in this serious and difficult labour, she was talking to her sister in that sweet and charming language of children, the grace of which, like the splendour of the butterfly’s wings, escapes when we try to preserve it.
“Look! look, sister, this doll is more amusing than the other. She moves, she cries, she is warm. Come, sister, let us play with her. She shall be my little girl; I will be a lady. I’ll come to see you, and you must look at her. By and by you must see her whiskers, and you must be surprised. And then you must see her ears, and then you must see her tail, and that will astonish you. And you must say to me: ‘Oh! my stars!’ and I will say to you, ‘Yes, madame, it is a little girl that I have like that.’ Little girls are like that now.”
Azelma listened to Eponine with wonder.
Meanwhile, the drinkers were singing an obscene song, at which they laughed enough to shake the room. Thénardier encouraged and accompanied them.
As birds make a nest of anything, children make a doll of no matter what. While Eponine and Azelma were dressing up the cat, Cosette, for her part, had dressed up the sword. That done, she had laid it upon her arm, and was singing it softly to sleep.
The doll is one of the most imperious necessities, and at the same time one of the most charming instincts of female childhood. To care for, to clothe, to adorn, to dress, to undress, to dress over again, to teach, to scold a little, to rock, to cuddle, to put to sleep, to imagine that something is somebody—all the future of woman is there. Even while musing and prattling, while making little wardrobes and little baby-clothes, while sewing little dresses, little bodices, and little jackets, the child becomes a little girl, the little girl becomes a big girl, the big girl becomes a woman. The first baby takes the place of the last doll.
A little girl without a doll is almost as unfortunate and quite as impossible as a woman without children.
Cosette had therefore made a doll of her sword.
The Thénardiess, on her part, approached the yellow man. “My husband is right,” thought she; “it may be Monsieur Laffitte. Some rich men are so odd.”
She came and rested her elbow on the table at which he was sitting.
“Monsieur,” said she—
At this word monsieur, the man turned. The Thénardiess had called him before only brave man or good man.
“You see, monsieur,” she pursued, putting on her cloying look, which was still more unendurable than her ferocious manner, “I am very willing the child should play, I am not opposed to it; it is well for once, because you are generous. But, you see, she is poor; she must work.”
“The child is not yours, then?” asked the man.
“Oh dear! no, monsieur! It is a little pauper that we have taken in through charity. A sort of imbecile child. She must have water on her brain. Her head is big, as you see. We do all we can for her, but we are not rich. It’s no use writing to where she comes from; for six months we have had no answer. We think that her mother must be dead.”
“Ah!” said the man, and he fell back into his reverie.
“This mother was no great shakes,” added the Thénardiess. “She abandoned her child.”
During all this conversation, Cosette, as if an instinct had warned her that they were talking about her, had not taken her eyes from the Thénardiess. She listened. She heard a few words here and there.
Meanwhile the drinkers, all three-quarters drunk, were repeating their foul chorus with redoubled gaiety. It was highly spiced with jests, in which the names of the Virgin and the child Jesus were often heard. The Thenardiess had gone to take her part in the hilarity. Cosette, under the table, was looking into the fire, which was reflected from her fixed eye; she was again rocking the sort of rag baby that 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!”
At the repeated entreaties of the hostess, the yellow man, “the millionaire,” finally consented to sup.
“What will monsieur have?”
“Some bread and cheese,” said the man.
“Decidedly, it is a beggar,” thought the Thénardiess.
The revellers continued to sing their songs, and the child, under the table, also sang hers.
All at once, Cosette stopped. She had just turned and seen the little Thenardiers’ doll, which they had forsaken for the cat and left on the floor, a few steps from the kitchen table.
Then she let the bundled-up sword, that only half satisfied her, fall, and ran her eyes slowly around the room. The Thénardiess was whispering to her husband and counting some money, Eponine and Azelma were playing with the cat, the travellers were eating or drinking or singing, nobody was looking at 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 nobody was watching her, then darted quickly to the doll, and seized it. An instant afterwards she was at her place, seated, motionless, only turned in such a way as to keep the doll that she held in her arms in the shadow. The happiness of playing with a doll was so rare to her that it had all the violence of rapture.
Nobody had seen her, except the traveller, who was slowly eating his meagre supper.
This joy lasted for nearly a quarter of an hour.
But in spite of Cosette’s precautions, she did not perceive that one of the doll’s feet stuck out, and that the fire of the fireplace lighted it up very vividly. This rosy and luminous foot which protruded from the shadow suddenly caught Azelma’s eye, and she said to Eponine: “Oh! sister!”
The two little girls stopped, stupefied; Cosette had dared to take the doll.
Eponine got up, and without letting go of the cat, went to her mother and began to pull at her skirt.
“Let me alone,” said the mother; “what do you want?”
“Mother,” said the child, “look there.”
And she pointed at Cosette.
Cosette, wholly absorbed in the ecstasy of her possession, saw and heard nothing else.
The face of the Thénardiess assumed the peculiar expression which is composed of the terrible mingled with the commonplace and which has given this class of women the name of shrews.
This time wounded pride exasperated her anger still more. Cosette had transgressed all social limits. Cosette had laid her hands upon the doll of “those young ladies.” A czarina who had seen a moujik trying on the grand cordon of her imperial son would have had the same expression.
She cried with a voice harsh with indignation:
“Cosette!”
Cosette shuddered as if the earth had quaked beneath her. She turned around.
“Cosette!” repeated the Thénardiess.
Cosette took the doll and placed it gently on the floor with a kind of veneration mingled with despair. Then, without taking away her eyes, she joined her hands, and, what is frightful to tell in a child of that age, she wrung them; then, what none of the emotions of the day had drawn from her, neither the run in the wood, nor the weight of the bucket of water, nor the loss of the money, nor the sight of the cowhide, nor even the stern words she had heard from the Thénardiess, she burst into tears. She sobbed.
Meanwhile the traveller arose.
“What is the matter?” said he to the Thénardiess.
“Don’t you see?” said the Thénardiess, pointing with her finger to the corpus delicti lying at Cosette’s feet.
“Well, what is that?” said the man.
“That beggar,” answered the Thénardiess, “has dared to touch the children’s doll.”
“All this noise about that?” said the man. “Well, what if she did play with that doll?”
“She has touched it with her dirty hands!” continued the Thénardiess, “with her horrid hands!”
Here Cosette redoubled her sobs.
“Be still!” cried the Thénardiess.
The man walked straight to the street door, opened it, and went out.
As soon as he had gone, the Thénardiess profited by his absence to give Cosette under the table a severe kick, which made the child shriek.
The door opened again, and the man reappeared, holding in his hands the fabulous doll of which we have spoken, and which had been the admiration of all the youngsters of the village since morning; he stood it up before Cosette, saying:
“Here, this is for you.”
It is probable that during the time he had been there—more than an hour—in the midst of his reverie, he had caught confused glimpses of this toy-shop, lighted up with lamps and candles so splendidly that it shone through the bar-room window like an illumination.
Cosette raised her eyes; she saw the man approach her with that doll as she would have seen the sun approach, she heard those astounding words: This is for you. She looked at him, she looked at the doll, then she drew back slowly, and went and hid as far as she could under the table in the corner of the room.
She wept no more, she cried no more, she had the appearance of no longer daring to breathe.
The Thénardiess, Eponine, and Azelma were so many statues. Even the drinkers stopped. There was a solemn silence in the whole bar-room.
The Thénardiess, petrified and mute, recommenced her conjectures anew: “What is this old fellow? is he a pauper? is he a millionaire? Perhaps he’s both, that is a robber.”
The face of the husband Thénardier presented that expressive wrinkle which marks the human countenance whenever the dominant instinct appears in it with all its brutal power. The innkeeper contemplated by turns the doll and the traveller; he seemed to be scenting this man as he would have scented a bag of money. This only lasted for a moment. He approached his wife and whispered to her:
“That gadget cost at least thirty francs. No nonsense. Down on your knees before the man!”
Coarse natures have this in common with artless natures, that they have no transitions.
“Well, Cosette,” said the Thénardiess in a voice which was meant to be sweet, and which was entirely composed of the sour honey of vicious women, “a‘n’t you going to take your doll?”
Cosette ventured to come out of her hole.
“My little Cosette,” said Thénardier with a caressing air, “Monsieur gives you a doll. Take it. It is yours.”
Cosette looked upon the wonderful doll with a sort of terror. Her face was still flooded with tears, but her eyes began to fill, like the sky in the breaking of the dawn, with strange radiations of joy. What she experienced at that moment was almost like what she would have felt if some one had said to her suddenly: Little girl, you are queen of France.
It seemed to her that if she touched that doll, thunder would spring forth from it.
Which was true to some extent, for she thought that the Thénardiess would scold and beat her.
However, the attraction overcame her. She finally approached and timidly murmured, turning towards the Thénardiess:
“Can I, madame?”
No expression can describe her look, at once full of despair, dismay, and transport.
“Good Lord!” said the Thénardiess, “it is yours. Since monsieur gives it to you.”
“Is it true, is it true, monsieur?” said Cosette; “is the lady for me?”
The stranger appeared to have his eyes full of tears. He seemed to be at that stage of emotion in which one does not speak for fear of weeping. He nodded assent to Cosette, and put the hand of “the lady” in her little hand.
Cosette withdrew her hand hastily, as if that of the lady burned her, and looked down at the floor. We are compelled to add, that at that instant she thrust out her tongue enormously. All at once she turned, and seized the doll eagerly.
“I will call her Catharine,” said she.
It was a strange moment when Cosette’s rags met and pressed against the ribbons and the fresh pink muslins of the doll.
“Madame,” said she, “may I put her in a chair?”
“Yes, my child,” answered the Thenardiess.
It was Eponine and Azelma now who looked upon Cosette with envy. Cosette placed Catharine on a chair, then sat down on the floor before her, and remained motionless, without saying a word, in the attitude of contemplation.
“Why don’t you play, Cosette?” said the stranger.
“Oh! I am playing,” answered the child.
This stranger, this unknown man, who seemed like a visit from Providence to Cosette, was at that moment the being which the Thénardiess hated more than aught else in the world. However, she was compelled to restrain herself. Her emotions were more than she could endure, accustomed as she was to dissimulation, by endeavouring to copy her husband in all her actions. She sent her daughters to bed immediately, then asked the yellow man’s permission to send Cosette to bed—who is very tired to-day, added she, with a motherly air. Cosette went to bed, holding Catharine in her arms.
The Thenardiess went from time to time to the other end of the room, where her husband was, to vent her feelings, she said. She exchanged a few words with him, which were the more furious that she did not dare to speak them aloud:—
“The old fool! what has he got into his head, to come here to disturb us! to want that little monster to play! to give her dolls! to give forty-franc dolls to a slut that I wouldn’t give forty sous for. A little more, and he would say your majesty to her, as they do to the Duchess of Berry! Is he in his senses? he must be crazy, the strange old fellow!”
“Why? It is very simple,” replied Thénardier. “If it amuses him! It amuses you for the girl to work; it amuses him for her to play. He has the right to do it. A traveller can do as he likes, if he pays. If this old fellow is a philanthropist, what is that to you? if he is crazy it don’t concern you. What do you interfere for, as long as he has money?”
Language of a master and reasoning of an innkeeper, which neither in one case nor the other admits of reply.
The man had leaned his elbows on the table, and resumed his attitude of reverie. All the other travellers, pedlars, and waggoners, had drawn back a little, and sung no more. They looked upon him from a distance with a sort of respectful fear.
This solitary man, so poorly clad, who took five-franc coins from his pocket with so much indifference, and who lavished gigantic dolls on little brats in wooden shoes, was certainly a magnificent and formidable “good-fellow.”
Several hours passed away. The midnight mass was said, the revel was finished, the drinkers had gone, the house was closed, the room was deserted, the fire had gone out, the stranger still remained in the same place and in the same posture. From time to time he changed the elbow on which he rested. That was all. But he had not spoken a word since Cosette was gone.
The Thénardiers alone out of propriety and curiosity, had remained in the room.
“Is he going to spend the night like this?” grumbled the Thénardiess. When the clock struck two in the morning, she acknowledged herself beaten, and said to her husband: “I am going to bed, you may do as you like.” The husband sat down at a table in a corner, lighted a candle, and began to read the Courrier Français.
A good hour passed thus. The worthy innkeeper had read the Courrier Français at least three times, from the date of the number to the name of the printer. The stranger did not stir.
Thénardier moved, coughed, spit, blew his nose, and creaked his chair. The man did not stir. “Is he asleep?” thought Thénardier. The man was not asleep, but nothing could arouse him.
Finally, Thénardier took off his cap, approached softly, and ventured to say:—
“Is monsieur not going to repose?”
Not going to bed would have seemed to him too much and too familiar. To repose implied luxury, and there was respect in it. Such words have the mysterious and wonderful property of swelling the bill in the morning. A room in which you go to bed costs twenty sous; a room in which you repose costs twenty francs.
“Yes,” said the stranger, “you are right. Where is your stable?”
“Monsieur,” said Thénardier, with a smile, “I will conduct monsieur.”
He took the candle, the man took his bundle and his staff, and Thénardier led him into a room on the first floor, which was very showy, furnished all in mahogany, with a high-post bedstead and red calico curtains.
“What is this?” said the traveller.
“It is properly our bridal chamber,” said the innkeeper. “We occupy another like this, my spouse and I; this is not open more than three or four times in a year.”
“I should have liked the stable as well,” said the man, bluntly.
Thénardier did not appear to hear this not very civil answer.
He lighted two entirely new wax candles, which were displayed upon the mantel; a good fire was blazing in the fireplace. There was on the mantel, under a glass case, a woman’s head-dress of silver thread and orange-flowers.
“What is this?” said the stranger.
“Monsieur,” said Thénardier, “it is my wife’s bridal cap.”
The traveller looked at the object with a look which seemed to say: “there was a moment, then, when this monster was a virgin.”
Thénardier lied, however. When he hired this shanty to turn it into a tavern, he found the room thus furnished, and bought this furniture, and purchased at second-hand these orange-flowers, thinking that this would cast a gracious light over “his spouse,” and that the house would derive from them what the English call respectability.
When the traveller turned again the host had disappeared. Thénardier had discreetly taken himself out of the way without daring to say good-night, not desiring to treat with a disrespectful cordiality a man whom he proposed to skin royally in the morning.
The innkeeper retired to his room; his wife was in bed, but not asleep. When she heard her husband’s step, she turned towards him and said:
“You know that I am going to kick Cosette out doors to-morrow.”
Thénardier coolly answered:
“You are, indeed!”
They exchanged no further words, and in a few moments their candle was blown out.
For his part, the traveller had put his staff and bundle in a corner. The host gone, he sat down in an arm-chair, and remained some time thinking. Then he drew off his shoes, took one of the two candles, blew out the other, pushed open the door, and went out of the room, looking about him as if he were searching for something. He passed through a hall, and came to the stairway. There he heard a very soft little sound, which resembled the breathing of a child. Guided by this sound he came to a sort of triangular nook built under the stairs, or, rather, formed by the staircase itself. This hole was nothing but the space beneath the stairs. There, among all sorts of old baskets and old rubbish, in the dust and among the cobwebs, there was a bed; if a mattress so full of holes as to show the straw, and a covering so full of holes as to show the mattress, can be called a bed. There were no sheets. This was placed on the floor immediately on the tiles. In this bed Cosette was sleeping.
The man approached and looked at her.
Cosette was sleeping soundly; she was dressed. In the winter she did not undress on account of the cold. She held the doll clasped in her arms; its large open eyes shone in the obscurity. From time to time she heaved a deep sigh, as if she were about to wake, and she hugged the doll almost convulsively. There was only one of her wooden shoes at the side of her bed. An open door near Cosette’s nook disclosed a large dark room. The stranger entered. At the further end, through a glass window, he perceived two little beds with very white spreads. They were those of Azelma and Eponine. Half hid behind these beds was a willow cradle without curtains, in which the little boy who had cried all the evening was sleeping.
The stranger conjectured that this room communicated with that of the Thénardiers. He was about to withdraw when his eye fell upon the fireplace, one of those huge tavern fireplaces where there is always so little fire, when there is a fire, and which are so cold to look upon. In this one there was no fire, there were not even any ashes. What there was, however, attracted the traveller’s attention. It was two little children’s shoes, of coquettish shape and of different sizes. The traveller remembered the graceful and immemorial custom of children putting their shoes in the fireplace on Christmas night, to wait there in the darkness in expectation of some shining gift from their good fairy. Eponine and Azelma had taken good care not to forget this, and each had put one of her shoes in the fireplace.
The traveller bent over them.
The fairy—that is to say, the mother—had already made her visit, and shining in each shoe was a beautiful new ten-sous coin.
The man rose up and was on the point of going away, when he perceived further along, by itself, in the darkest corner of the fireplace, another object. He looked, and recognised a shoe, a horrid wooden shoe of the clumsiest sort, half broken and covered with ashes and dried mud. It was Cosette’s shoe. Cosette, with that touching confidence of childhood which can always be deceived without ever being discouraged, had also placed her shoe in the fireplace.
What a sublime and sweet thing is hope in a child who has never known anything but despair!
There was nothing in this wooden shoe.
The stranger fumbled in his waistcoat, bent over, and dropped into Cosette’s shoe a gold Louis.
Then he went back to his room with stealthy tread.