Les Misérables, v. 2/5: Cosette

by Victor Hugo

  CHAPTER II

  TWO FULL-LENGTH PORTRAITS.

  Up to the present, only a side-view of the Thénardiers has been offeredthe reader of this book; but the moment has now arrived to walk roundthe couple and regard them on all sides. Thénardier had passed hisfiftieth year, Madame Thénardier was just on her fortieth, which isfifty in a woman; and in this way there was a balance of age betweenhusband and wife. Our readers may probably have retained from thefirst meeting some recollection of this tall, light-haired, red, fat,square, enormous, and active woman; she belonged, as we said, to therace of giantesses, who show themselves at fairs, with paving-stoneshanging from their hair. She did everything in the house; made thebeds, cleaned the rooms, was cook and laundress, produced rain andfine weather, and played the devil. Her only assistant was Cosette,--amouse in the service of an elephant. All trembled at the sound of hervoice,--windows, furniture, and people; and her large face, dotted withfreckles, looked like a skimmer. She had a beard, and was the ideal ofa market porter dressed in female attire. She swore splendidly, andboasted of being able to crack a walnut with a blow of her fist. Had itnot been for the romances she had read, and which at times made theaffected woman appear under the ogress, no one would ever have dreamedof thinking that she was feminine. She seemed to be the product of across between a young damsel and a fish fag. When people heard herspeak, they said,--"'T is a gendarme;" when they saw her drink, theysaid,--"'T is a carter;" and when they saw her treatment of Cosette,they said,--"'T is the hangman;" when she was quiet, a tooth projectedfrom her mouth.

  Thénardier was a short, thin, sallow, angular, bony, weak man, wholooked ill, and was perfectly well--his cunning began with this. Hesmiled habitually through caution, and was polite to nearly everybody,even to the beggar whom he refused a halfpenny. He had the eye of aferret and the face of a man of letters, and greatly resembled theportraits of Abbé Delille. His coquetry consisted in drinking withcarriers, and no one had ever been able to intoxicate him. He worea blouse and under it an old black coat, and had pretensions toliterature and materialism. There were some names he frequently utteredin order to support an argument, such as Voltaire, Raynal, Parny, and,strangely enough, St. Augustine. He declared that he had "a system." Hewas a thorough scamp, however. It will be remembered that he assertedhe had been a soldier, and told people with some pomp how at Waterloo,where he was sergeant in the 6th or 9th light something, he alone,against a squadron of Hussars of death, had covered with his body andsaved "a severely wounded general." Hence came his flaming sign,and the name by which his house was generally known, "The Sergeantof Waterloo." He was liberal, classical, and Bonapartist; he hadsubscribed to the Champ d'Asile, and it was said in the village that hehad studied for the priesthood. We believe that he had simply studiedin Holland to be an inn-keeper. This scoundrel of a composite orderwas in all probability some Fleming of Lille, a Frenchman at Paris, aBelgian at Brussels, conveniently striding over two frontiers. We knowhis prowess at Waterloo, and, as we see, he exaggerated slightly. Ebband flow and wandering adventures were the elements of his existence.A tattered conscience entails an irregular life, and probably at thestormy period of June 18, 1815, Thénardier belonged to that variety ofmarauding sutlers to whom we have alluded, who go about the countryselling to some and robbing others, and moving about in a haltingcart after marching troops, with the instinct of always joining thevictorious army. When the campaign was over, having, as he said, "somebrads," he opened a pot-house at Montfermeil. These "brads," consistingof purses and watches, gold rings and silver crosses, collected inditches filled with corpses, did not make a heavy total, and did notcarry very far this sutler turned inn-keeper.

  Thénardier had something rectangular in his movements, which, whenjoined to an oath, recalls the barrack,--to the sign of the cross, theseminary. He was a clever speaker, and liked to be thought educated;but the schoolmaster noticed that he made mistakes. He drew up atraveller's bill in a masterly way, but practised eyes sometimesfound orthographical errors in it. Thénardier was cunning, greedy,indolent, and skilful: he did not despise his servant-girls, and forthat reason his wife no longer kept any. This giantess was jealous,and fancied that this little yellow man must be an object of universalcovetousness. Thénardier above all, as a crafty and well-balanced man,was a villain of the temperate genus; and this breed is the worst,as hypocrisy is mixed up in them. It was not that Thénardier was notat times capable of passion, at least quite as much as his wife, butit was very rare, and at such moments,--as he owed a grudge to thewhole human race, as he had within him a profound furnace of hatred,as he was one of those persons who avenge themselves perpetually, whoaccuse everybody who passes before them for what falls upon them, andwho are ever ready to cast on the first-comer, as a legitimate charge,the whole of the annoyances, bankruptcies, and deceptions of theirlife,--when all this leaven was working in him and boiling in his mouthand eyes, he was fearful. Woe to the person who came under his fury atsuch times.

  In addition to his other qualities, Thénardier was attentive andpenetrating, silent or chattering according to occasion, and alwayswith great intelligence. He had the glance of sailors who areaccustomed to wink when looking through a telescope. Thénardier was astatesman. Any new-comer, on entering the pot-house, said upon seeingthe woman, "That is the master of the house." Mistake. She was noteven the mistress, for her husband was both master and mistress. Shedid and he created, he directed everything by a species of invisibleand continuous magnetic action; a word, sometimes a sign, from himwas sufficient, and the mastodon obeyed. The husband was to his wife,though she did not know it, a species of peculiar and sovereign being.However much she might dissent from "Monsieur Thénardier,"--aninadmissible hypothesis,--she would have never proved him publicly inthe wrong for any consideration. She would never have committed "inthe presence of strangers" that fault which wives so often commit,and which is called, in parliamentary language, "exposing the crown."Although their agreement only resulted in evil, there was meditationin Madame Thénardier's submission to her husband. This mountain ofnoise and flesh moved under the little finger of this frail despot;seen from its dwarfish and grotesque aspect, it was the great universalthing,--adoration of matter for the mind. There was something strangein Thénardier, and hence came the absolute dominion of this man overthis woman. At certain moments she saw him as a lighted candle, atothers she felt him as a claw. This woman was a formidable creature,who only loved her children, and only feared her husband. She was amother because she was mammiferous; her maternity ceased, however, withher girls, and, as we shall see, did not extend to boys.

  Thénardier himself had only one thought,--to enrich himself; but he didnot succeed, for a suitable stage was wanting for this great talent.Thénardier ruined himself at Montfermeil, if ruin is possible at zero;in Switzerland or the Pyrenees he would have become a millionnaire.But where fate fastens a landlord he must browse. In this year, 1823,Thénardier was in debt to the amount of 1500 francs, which rendered himanxious. Whatever might be the obstinate injustice of destiny againsthim, Thénardier was one of those men who thoroughly understand, andin the most modern fashion, the theory which is a virtue in barbarousnations, and an article of sale among civilized nations,--hospitality.He was also an admirable poacher, and renowned for the correctnessof his aim, and he had a certain cold and peaceful laugh, which waspeculiarly dangerous.

  His landlord theories burst forth from him at times in flashes, and hehad professional aphorisms which he drove into his wife's mind. "Theduty of a landlord," he said one day savagely, and in a low voice, "isto sell to the first-comer ragouts, rest, light, fire, dirty sheets,chamber-maids, fleas, and smiles; to arrest passers-by, empty smallpurses, and honestly lighten heavy ones; to shelter respectfullytravelling families, rasp the husband, peck the wife, and pluck thechildren; to set a price on the open window, the shut window, thechimney-corner, the easy-chair, the sofa, the stool, the feather-bed,the mattress, and the bundle of straw; to know how much the reflectionwears off the l
ooking-glass, and charge for it, and by the five hundredthousand fiends to make the traveller pay for everything, even to theflies his dog eats!"

  This husband and this wife were craft and rage married, and formed ahideous and terrible pair. While the husband ruminated and combined,the she Thénardier did not think about absent creditors, had notthought of yesterday or to-morrow, and lived violently only for themoment. Such were these two beings, between whom Cosette stood,enduring their double pressure, like a creature who was being at oncecrushed by a mill-stone and torn with a pair of pincers. Man and wifehad each a different way. Cosette was beaten, that came from the wife;she went about barefoot in winter, that came from the husband. Cosettewent up and down stairs, washed, brushed, scrubbed, swept, ran about,panted for breath, moved heavy weights, and, little though she was, didall the hard work. She could expect no pity from a ferocious mistressand a venomous master, and the "Sergeant of Waterloo" was, as it were,a web in which Cosette was caught and trembled. The ideal of oppressionwas realized by this gloomy household, and it was something like a flyserving spiders. The poor child was passively silent. What takes placein these souls, which have just left the presence of God, when theyfind themselves thus, in their dawn, all little and naked among humanbeings?