by Victor Hugo
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 h
ost 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.