Les Misérables
Chapter V — The Little One All Alone
As the Thénardier hostelry was in that part of the village which is near the church, it was to the spring in the forest in the direction of Chelles that Cosette was obliged to go for her water.
She did not glance at the display of a single other merchant. So long as she was in Boulanger Lane and in the neighborhood of the church, the lighted stalls illuminated the road; but soon the last light from the last stall vanished. The poor child found herself in the dark. She plunged into it. Only, as a certain emotion overcame her, she made as much motion as possible with the handle of the bucket as she walked along. This made a noise which afforded her company.
The further she went, the denser the darkness became. There was no one in the streets. However, she did encounter a woman, who turned around on seeing her, and stood still, muttering between her teeth: “Where can that child be going? Is it a werewolf child?” Then the woman recognized Cosette. “Well,” said she, “it’s the Lark!”
In this manner Cosette traversed the labyrinth of tortuous and deserted streets which terminate in the village of Montfermeil on the side of Chelles. So long as she had the houses or even the walls only on both sides of her path, she proceeded with tolerable boldness. From time to time she caught the flicker of a candle through the crack of a shutter—this was light and life; there were people there, and it reassured her. But in proportion as she advanced, her pace slackened mechanically, as it were. When she had passed the corner of the last house, Cosette paused. It had been hard to advance further than the last stall; it became impossible to proceed further than the last house. She set her bucket on the ground, thrust her hand into her hair, and began slowly to scratch her head,—a gesture peculiar to children when terrified and undecided what to do. It was no longer Montfermeil; it was the open fields. Black and desert space was before her. She gazed in despair at that darkness, where there was no longer any one, where there were beasts, where there were spectres, possibly. She took a good look, and heard the beasts walking on the grass, and she distinctly saw spectres moving in the trees. Then she seized her bucket again; fear had lent her audacity. “Bah!” said she; “I will tell him that there was no more water!” And she resolutely re-entered Montfermeil.
Hardly had she gone a hundred paces when she paused and began to scratch her head again. Now it was the Thénardier who appeared to her, with her hideous, hyena mouth, and wrath flashing in her eyes. The child cast a melancholy glance before her and behind her. What was she to do? What was to become of her? Where was she to go? In front of her was the spectre of the Thénardier; behind her all the phantoms of the night and of the forest. It was before the Thénardier that she recoiled. She resumed her path to the spring, and began to run. She emerged from the village, she entered the forest at a run, no longer looking at or listening to anything. She only paused in her course when her breath failed her; but she did not halt in her advance. She went straight before her in desperation.
As she ran she felt like crying.
The nocturnal quivering of the forest surrounded her completely.
She no longer thought, she no longer saw. The immensity of night was facing this tiny creature. On the one hand, all shadow; on the other, an atom.
It was only seven or eight minutes’ walk from the edge of the woods to the spring. Cosette knew the way, through having gone over it many times in daylight. Strange to say, she did not get lost. A remnant of instinct guided her vaguely. But she did not turn her eyes either to right or to left, for fear of seeing things in the branches and in the brushwood. In this manner she reached the spring.
It was a narrow, natural basin, hollowed out by the water in a clayey soil, about two feet deep, surrounded with moss and with those tall, crimped grasses which are called Henry IV.’s frills, and paved with several large stones. A brook ran out of it, with a tranquil little noise.
Cosette did not take time to breathe. It was very dark, but she was in the habit of coming to this spring. She felt with her left hand in the dark for a young oak which leaned over the spring, and which usually served to support her, found one of its branches, clung to it, bent down, and plunged the bucket in the water. She was in a state of such violent excitement that her strength was trebled. While thus bent over, she did not notice that the pocket of her apron had emptied itself into the spring. The fifteen-sou piece fell into the water. Cosette neither saw nor heard it fall. She drew out the bucket nearly full, and set it on the grass.
That done, she perceived that she was worn out with fatigue. She would have liked to set out again at once, but the effort required to fill the bucket had been such that she found it impossible to take a step. She was forced to sit down. She dropped on the grass, and remained crouching there.
She shut her eyes; then she opened them again, without knowing why, but because she could not do otherwise. The agitated water in the bucket beside her was describing circles which resembled tin serpents.
Overhead the sky was covered with vast black clouds, which were like masses of smoke. The tragic mask of shadow seemed to bend vaguely over the child.
Jupiter was setting in the depths.
The child stared with bewildered eyes at this great star, with which she was unfamiliar, and which terrified her. The planet was, in fact, very near the horizon and was traversing a dense layer of mist which imparted to it a horrible ruddy hue. The mist, gloomily empurpled, magnified the star. One would have called it a luminous wound.
A cold wind was blowing from the plain. The forest was dark, not a leaf was moving; there were none of the vague, fresh gleams of summertide. Great boughs uplifted themselves in frightful wise. Slender and misshapen bushes whistled in the clearings. The tall grasses undulated like eels under the north wind. The nettles seemed to twist long arms furnished with claws in search of prey. Some bits of dry heather, tossed by the breeze, flew rapidly by, and had the air of fleeing in terror before something which was coming after. On all sides there were lugubrious stretches.
The darkness was bewildering. Man requires light. Whoever buries himself in the opposite of day feels his heart contract. When the eye sees black, the heart sees trouble. In an eclipse in the night, in the sooty opacity, there is anxiety even for the stoutest of hearts. No one walks alone in the forest at night without trembling. Shadows and trees—two formidable densities. A chimerical reality appears in the indistinct depths. The inconceivable is outlined a few paces distant from you with a spectral clearness. One beholds floating, either in space or in one’s own brain, one knows not what vague and intangible thing, like the dreams of sleeping flowers. There are fierce attitudes on the horizon. One inhales the effluvia of the great black void. One is afraid to glance behind him, yet desirous of doing so. The cavities of night, things grown haggard, taciturn profiles which vanish when one advances, obscure dishevelments, irritated tufts, livid pools, the lugubrious reflected in the funereal, the sepulchral immensity of silence, unknown but possible beings, bendings of mysterious branches, alarming torsos of trees, long handfuls of quivering plants,—against all this one has no protection. There is no hardihood which does not shudder and which does not feel the vicinity of anguish. One is conscious of something hideous, as though one’s soul were becoming amalgamated with the darkness. This penetration of the shadows is indescribably sinister in the case of a child.
Forests are apocalypses, and the beating of the wings of a tiny soul produces a sound of agony beneath their monstrous vault.
Without understanding her sensations, Cosette was conscious that she was seized upon by that black enormity of nature; it was no longer terror alone which was gaining possession of her; it was something more terrible even than terror; she shivered. There are no words to express the strangeness of that shiver which chilled her to the very bottom of her heart; her eye grew wild; she thought she felt that she should not be able to refrain from returning there at the same hour on the morrow.
Then, by a sort of instinct, she began to count aloud, one, two, three, four, and so on up to ten, in order to escape from that singular state which she did not understand, but which terrified her, and, when she had finished, she began again; this restored her to a true perception of the things about her. Her hands, which she had wet in drawing the water, felt cold; she rose; her terror, a natural and unconquerable terror, had returned: she had but one thought now,—to flee at full speed through the forest, across the fields to the houses, to the windows, to the lighted candles. Her glance fell upon the water which stood before her; such was the fright which the Thénardier inspired in her, that she dared not flee without that bucket of water: she seized the handle with both hands; she could hardly lift the pail.
In this manner she advanced a dozen paces, but the bucket was full; it was heavy; she was forced to set it on the ground once more. She took breath for an instant, then lifted the handle of the bucket again, and resumed her march, proceeding a little further this time, but again she was obliged to pause. After some seconds of repose she set out again. She walked bent forward, with drooping head, like an old woman; the weight of the bucket strained and stiffened her thin arms. The iron handle completed the benumbing and freezing of her wet and tiny hands; she was forced to halt from time to time, and each time that she did so, the cold water which splashed from the pail fell on her bare legs. This took place in the depths of a forest, at night, in winter, far from all human sight; she was a child of eight: no one but God saw that sad thing at the moment.
And her mother, no doubt, alas!
For there are things that make the dead open their eyes in their graves.
She panted with a sort of painful rattle; sobs contracted her throat, but she dared not weep, so afraid was she of the Thénardier, even at a distance: it was her custom to imagine the Thénardier always present.
However, she could not make much headway in that manner, and she went on very slowly. In spite of diminishing the length of her stops, and of walking as long as possible between them, she reflected with anguish that it would take her more than an hour to return to Montfermeil in this manner, and that the Thénardier would beat her. This anguish was mingled with her terror at being alone in the woods at night; she was worn out with fatigue, and had not yet emerged from the forest. On arriving near an old chestnut-tree with which she was acquainted, made a last halt, longer than the rest, in order that she might get well rested; then she summoned up all her strength, picked up her bucket again, and courageously resumed her march, but the poor little desperate creature could not refrain from crying, “O my God! my God!”
At that moment she suddenly became conscious that her bucket no longer weighed anything at all: a hand, which seemed to her enormous, had just seized the handle, and lifted it vigorously. She raised her head. A large black form, straight and erect, was walking beside her through the darkness; it was a man who had come up behind her, and whose approach she had not heard. This man, without uttering a word, had seized the handle of the bucket which she was carrying.
There are instincts for all the encounters of life.
The child was not afraid.
Chapter VI — Which Possibly Proves Boulatruelle’s Intelligence
On the afternoon of that same Christmas Day, 1823, a man had walked for rather a long time in the most deserted part of the Boulevard de l’Hôpital in Paris. This man had the air of a person who is seeking lodgings, and he seemed to halt, by preference, at the most modest houses on that dilapidated border of the faubourg Saint-Marceau.
We shall see further on that this man had, in fact, hired a chamber in that isolated quarter.
This man, in his attire, as in all his person, realized the type of what may be called the well-bred mendicant,—extreme wretchedness combined with extreme cleanliness. This is a very rare mixture which inspires intelligent hearts with that double respect which one feels for the man who is very poor, and for the man who is very worthy. He wore a very old and very well brushed round hat; a coarse coat, worn perfectly threadbare, of an ochre yellow, a color that was not in the least eccentric at that epoch; a large waistcoat with pockets of a venerable cut; black breeches, worn gray at the knee, stockings of black worsted; and thick shoes with copper buckles. He would have been pronounced a preceptor in some good family, returned from the emigration. He would have been taken for more than sixty years of age, from his perfectly white hair, his wrinkled brow, his livid lips, and his countenance, where everything breathed depression and weariness of life. Judging from his firm tread, from the singular vigor which stamped all his movements, he would have hardly been thought fifty. The wrinkles on his brow were well placed, and would have disposed in his favor any one who observed him attentively. His lip contracted with a strange fold which seemed severe, and which was humble. There was in the depth of his glance an indescribable melancholy serenity. In his left hand he carried a little bundle tied up in a handkerchief; in his right he leaned on a sort of a cudgel, cut from some hedge. This stick had been carefully trimmed, and had an air that was not too threatening; the most had been made of its knots, and it had received a coral-like head, made from red wax: it was a cudgel, and it seemed to be a cane.
There are but few passers-by on that boulevard, particularly in the winter. The man seemed to avoid them rather than to seek them, but this without any affectation.
At that epoch, King Louis XVIII. went nearly every day to Choisy-le-Roi: it was one of his favorite excursions. Towards two o’clock, almost invariably, the royal carriage and cavalcade was seen to pass at full speed along the Boulevard de l’Hôpital.
This served in lieu of a watch or clock to the poor women of the quarter who said, “It is two o’clock; there he is returning to the Tuileries.”
And some rushed forward, and others drew up in line, for a passing king always creates a tumult; besides, the appearance and disappearance of Louis XVIII. produced a certain effect in the streets of Paris. It was rapid but majestic. This impotent king had a taste for a fast gallop; as he was not able to walk, he wished to run: that cripple would gladly have had himself drawn by the lightning. He passed, pacific and severe, in the midst of naked swords. His massive couch, all covered with gilding, with great branches of lilies painted on the panels, thundered noisily along. There was hardly time to cast a glance upon it. In the rear angle on the right there was visible on tufted cushions of white satin a large, firm, and ruddy face, a brow freshly powdered _à l’oiseau royal_, a proud, hard, crafty eye, the smile of an educated man, two great epaulets with bullion fringe floating over a bourgeois coat, the Golden Fleece, the cross of Saint Louis, the cross of the Legion of Honor, the silver plaque of the Saint-Esprit, a huge belly, and a wide blue ribbon: it was the king. Outside of Paris, he held his hat decked with white ostrich plumes on his knees enwrapped in high English gaiters; when he re-entered the city, he put on his hat and saluted rarely; he stared coldly at the people, and they returned it in kind. When he appeared for the first time in the Saint-Marceau quarter, the whole success which he produced is contained in this remark of an inhabitant of the faubourg to his comrade, “That big fellow yonder is the government.”
This infallible passage of the king at the same hour was, therefore, the daily event of the Boulevard de l’Hôpital.
The promenader in the yellow coat evidently did not belong in the quarter, and probably did not belong in Paris, for he was ignorant as to this detail. When, at two o’clock, the royal carriage, surrounded by a squadron of the body-guard all covered with silver lace, debouched on the boulevard, after having made the turn of the Salpêtrière, he appeared surprised and almost alarmed. There was no one but himself in this cross-lane. He drew up hastily behind the corner of the wall of an enclosure, though this did not prevent M. le Duc de Havré from spying him out.
M. le Duc de Havré, as captain of the guard on duty that day, was seated in the carriage, opposite the king. He said to his Majesty, “Yonder is an evil-looking man.” Members of the police, who were clearing the king’s route, took equal note of him: one of them received an order to follow him. But the man plunged into the deserted little streets of the faubourg, and as twilight was beginning to fall, the agent lost trace of him, as is stated in a report addressed that same evening to M. le Comte d’Anglès, Minister of State, Prefect of Police.
When the man in the yellow coat had thrown the agent off his track, he redoubled his pace, not without turning round many a time to assure himself that he was not being followed. At a quarter-past four, that is to say, when night was fully come, he passed in front of the theatre of the Porte Saint-Martin, where The Two Convicts was being played that day. This poster, illuminated by the theatre lanterns, struck him; for, although he was walking rapidly, he halted to read it. An instant later he was in the blind alley of La Planchette, and he entered the _Plat d’Etain_ [the Pewter Platter], where the office of the coach for Lagny was then situated. This coach set out at half-past four. The horses were harnessed, and the travellers, summoned by the coachman, were hastily climbing the lofty iron ladder of the vehicle.
The man inquired:—
“Have you a place?”
“Only one—beside me on the box,” said the coachman.
“I will take it.”
“Climb up.”
Nevertheless, before setting out, the coachman cast a glance at the traveller’s shabby dress, at the diminutive size of his bundle, and made him pay his fare.
“Are you going as far as Lagny?” demanded the coachman.
“Yes,” said the man.
The traveller paid to Lagny.
They started. When they had passed the barrier, the coachman tried to enter into conversation, but the traveller only replied in monosyllables. The coachman took to whistling and swearing at his horses.
The coachman wrapped himself up in his cloak. It was cold. The man did not appear to be thinking of that. Thus they passed Gournay and Neuilly-sur-Marne.
Towards six o’clock in the evening they reached Chelles. The coachman drew up in front of the carters’ inn installed in the ancient buildings of the Royal Abbey, to give his horses a breathing spell.
“I get down here,” said the man.
He took his bundle and his cudgel and jumped down from the vehicle.
An instant later he had disappeared.
He did not enter the inn.
When the coach set out for Lagny a few minutes later, it did not encounter him in the principal street of Chelles.
The coachman turned to the inside travellers.
“There,” said he, “is a man who does not belong here, for I do not know him. He had not the air of owning a sou, but he does not consider money; he pays to Lagny, and he goes only as far as Chelles. It is night; all the houses are shut; he does not enter the inn, and he is not to be found. So he has dived through the earth.”
The man had not plunged into the earth, but he had gone with great strides through the dark, down the principal street of Chelles, then he had turned to the right before reaching the church, into the crossroad leading to Montfermeil, like a person who was acquainted with the country and had been there before.
He followed this road rapidly. At the spot where it is intersected by the ancient tree-bordered road which runs from Gagny to Lagny, he heard people coming. He concealed himself precipitately in a ditch, and there waited until the passers-by were at a distance. The precaution was nearly superfluous, however; for, as we have already said, it was a very dark December night. Not more than two or three stars were visible in the sky.
It is at this point that the ascent of the hill begins. The man did not return to the road to Montfermeil; he struck across the fields to the right, and entered the forest with long strides.
Once in the forest he slackened his pace, and began a careful examination of all the trees, advancing, step by step, as though seeking and following a mysterious road known to himself alone. There came a moment when he appeared to lose himself, and he paused in indecision. At last he arrived, by dint of feeling his way inch by inch, at a clearing where there was a great heap of whitish stones. He stepped up briskly to these stones, and examined them attentively through the mists of night, as though he were passing them in review. A large tree, covered with those excrescences which are the warts of vegetation, stood a few paces distant from the pile of stones. He went up to this tree and passed his hand over the bark of the trunk, as though seeking to recognize and count all the warts.
Opposite this tree, which was an ash, there was a chestnut-tree, suffering from a peeling of the bark, to which a band of zinc had been nailed by way of dressing. He raised himself on tiptoe and touched this band of zinc.
Then he trod about for awhile on the ground comprised in the space between the tree and the heap of stones, like a person who is trying to assure himself that the soil has not recently been disturbed.
That done, he took his bearings, and resumed his march through the forest.
It was the man who had just met Cosette.
As he walked through the thicket in the direction of Montfermeil, he had espied that tiny shadow moving with a groan, depositing a burden on the ground, then taking it up and setting out again. He drew near, and perceived that it was a very young child, laden with an enormous bucket of water. Then he approached the child, and silently grasped the handle of the bucket.
Chapter VII — Cosette Side by Side with the Stranger in the Dark
Cosette, as we have said, was not frightened.
The man accosted her. He spoke in a voice that was grave and almost bass.
“My child, what you are carrying is very heavy for you.”
Cosette raised her head and replied:—
“Yes, sir.”
“Give it to me,” said the man; “I will carry it for you.”
Cosette let go of the bucket-handle. The man walked along beside her.
“It really is very heavy,” he muttered between his teeth. Then he added:—
“How old are you, little one?”
“Eight, sir.”
“And have you come from far like this?”
“From the spring in the forest.”
“Are you going far?”
“A good quarter of an hour’s walk from here.”
The man said nothing for a moment; then he remarked abruptly:—
“So you have no mother.”
“I don’t know,” answered the child.
Before the man had time to speak again, she added:—
“I don’t think so. Other people have mothers. I have none.”
And after a silence she went on:—
“I think that I never had any.”
The man halted; he set the bucket on the ground, bent down and placed both hands on the child’s shoulders, making an effort to look at her and to see her face in the dark.
Cosette’s thin and sickly face was vaguely outlined by the livid light in the sky.
“What is your name?” said the man.
“Cosette.”
The man seemed to have received an electric shock. He looked at her once more; then he removed his hands from Cosette’s shoulders, seized the bucket, and set out again.
After a moment he inquired:—
“Where do you live, little one?”
“At Montfermeil, if you know where that is.”
“That is where we are going?”
“Yes, sir.”
He paused; then began again:—
“Who sent you at such an hour to get water in the forest?”
“It was Madame Thénardier.”
The man resumed, in a voice which he strove to render indifferent, but in which there was, nevertheless, a singular tremor:—
“What does your Madame Thénardier do?”
“She is my mistress,” said the child. “She keeps the inn.”
“The inn?” said the man. “Well, I am going to lodge there to-night. Show me the way.”
“We are on the way there,” said the child.
The man walked tolerably fast. Cosette followed him without difficulty. She no longer felt any fatigue. From time to time she raised her eyes towards the man, with a sort of tranquillity and an indescribable confidence. She had never been taught to turn to Providence and to pray; nevertheless, she felt within her something which resembled hope and joy, and which mounted towards heaven.
Several minutes elapsed. The man resumed:—
“Is there no servant in Madame Thénardier’s house?”
“No, sir.”
“Are you alone there?”
“Yes, sir.”
Another pause ensued. Cosette lifted up her voice:—
“That is to say, there are two little girls.”
“What little girls?”
“Ponine and Zelma.”
This was the way the child simplified the romantic names so dear to the female Thénardier.
“Who are Ponine and Zelma?”
“They are Madame Thénardier’s young ladies; her daughters, as you would say.”
“And what do those girls do?”
“Oh!” said the child, “they have beautiful dolls; things with gold in them, all full of affairs. They play; they amuse themselves.”
“All day long?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And you?”
“I? I work.”
“All day long?”
The child raised her great eyes, in which hung a tear, which was not visible because of the darkness, and replied gently:—
“Yes, sir.”
After an interval of silence she went on:—
“Sometimes, when I have finished my work and they let me, I amuse myself, too.”
“How do you amuse yourself?”
“In the best way I can. They let me alone; but I have not many playthings. Ponine and Zelma will not let me play with their dolls. I have only a little lead sword, no longer than that.”
The child held up her tiny finger.
“And it will not cut?”
“Yes, sir,” said the child; “it cuts salad and the heads of flies.”
They reached the village. Cosette guided the stranger through the streets. They passed the bakeshop, but Cosette did not think of the bread which she had been ordered to fetch. The man had ceased to ply her with questions, and now preserved a gloomy silence.
When they had left the church behind them, the man, on perceiving all the open-air booths, asked Cosette:—
“So there is a fair going on here?”
“No, sir; it is Christmas.”
As they approached the tavern, Cosette timidly touched his arm:—
“Monsieur?”
“What, my child?”
“We are quite near the house.”
“Well?”
“Will you let me take my bucket now?”
“Why?”
“If Madame sees that some one has carried it for me, she will beat me.”
The man handed her the bucket. An instant later they were at the tavern door.
Chapter VIII — 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 Thénardier 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 Thénardier speedily replaced her gruff air by her amiable grimace, a change of aspect common to tavern-keepers, and eagerly sought the newcomer 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 Thénardier 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 Thénardier 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 Thénardier 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 Thénardier woman; “why, the charge is only twenty sous!”
“It is forty in his case,” retorted the Thénardier, 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 Thénardier 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 Thénardier.
The man in the yellow coat never took his eyes from Cosette.
All at once, the Thénardier exclaimed:—
“By the way, where’s that bread?”
Cosette, according to her custom whenever the Thénardier 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 Thénardier; “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 Thénardier, “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 Thénardier, 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 Thénardier 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 Thénardier 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 Thénardier.
“Yes, that’s it,” said she.
It was not it, for it was a twenty-sou piece; but the Thénardier 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 Thénardier 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 Thénardier 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 Éponine 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 Thénardier 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.
Éponine 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 Thénardier sisters was very much faded, very old, and much broken; but it seemed nonetheless 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 Thénardier, 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 Thénardier, 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 Thénardier 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 Thénardier 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 Thénardier 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!”
Thénardier 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 Thénardier, 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!”
Thénardier approached and silently put the coin in his pocket.
The Thénardier 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 Thénardier, in a terrible voice.
“Thanks, Madame,” said Cosette.
And while her mouth thanked the Thénardier, her whole little soul thanked the traveller.
Thénardier 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 Thénardier, 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.
Éponine 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 Éponine, 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 Éponine.
In the meantime, the drinkers had begun to sing an obscene song, and to laugh at it until the ceiling shook. Thénardier accompanied and encouraged them.
As birds make nests out of everything, so children make a doll out of anything which comes to hand. While Éponine 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 Thénardier 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 Thénardier 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 reverie once more.
“Her mother didn’t amount to much,” added the Thénardier; “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 Thénardier’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 Thénardier 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 Thénardier.
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 Thénardiers’ 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 Thénardier 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 Éponine, “Look! sister.”
The two little girls paused in stupefaction; Cosette had dared to take their doll!
Éponine 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 Thénardier’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 Thénardier.
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 Thénardier 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 Thénardier.
“Don’t you see?” said the Thénardier, pointing to the corpus delicti which lay at Cosette’s feet.
“Well, what of it?” resumed the man.
“That beggar,” replied the Thénardier, “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 Thénardier, “with her frightful hands!”
Here Cosette redoubled her sobs.
“Will you stop your noise?” screamed the Thénardier.
The man went straight to the street door, opened it, and stepped out.
As soon as he had gone, the Thénardier 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 reappeared; 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 reverie 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 Thénardier, Éponine, and Azelma were like statues also; the very drinkers had paused; a solemn silence reigned through the whole room.
Madame Thénardier, 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 Thénardier 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 naïve natures, that they possess no transition state.
“Well, Cosette,” said the Thénardier, 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 Thénardier, 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 Thénardier would scold and beat her.
Nevertheless, the attraction carried the day. She ended by drawing near and murmuring timidly as she turned towards Madame Thénardier:—
“May I, Madame?”
No words can render that air, at once despairing, terrified, and ecstatic.
“Pardi!” cried the Thénardier, “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 Thénardier.
It was now the turn of Éponine 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 Thénardier 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 Thénardier 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 Duchesse de Berry! Is there any sense in it? Is he mad, then, that mysterious old fellow?”
“Why! it is perfectly simple,” replied Thénardier, “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 Thénardiers alone, out of politeness and curiosity, had remained in the room.
“Is he going to pass the night in that fashion?” grumbled the Thénardier. 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 Français.
A good hour passed thus. The worthy inn-keeper had perused the Courrier Français at least three times, from the date of the number to the printer’s name. The stranger did not stir.
Thénardier fidgeted, coughed, spit, blew his nose, and creaked his chair. Not a movement on the man’s part. “Is he asleep?” thought Thénardier. The man was not asleep, but nothing could arouse him.
At last Thénardier 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 Thénardier, with a smile, “I will conduct you, sir.”
He took the candle; the man picked up his bundle and cudgel, and Thénardier 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.
Thénardier 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 Thénardier, “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?”
Thénardier 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. Thénardier 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.”
Thénardier 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 armchair 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 Éponine 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 Thénardier 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. Éponine 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.