Les Miserables (abridged) (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) (46 page)

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.