بخش 2 کتاب 3

BOOK THREE

KEEPING THE PROMISE MADE TO THE DEAD WOMAN

THE ISSUE OF WATER AT MONTFERMEIL

MONTFERMEIL IS SITUATED between Livry and Chelles, on the southern edge of the high plateau that separates the Ourcq from the Marne. Today it is a fairly sizeable market town, embellished all year round with stucco villas and, on Sundays, with its bourgeois citizens in full bloom. In 1823, there were not so many white houses in Montfermeil nor so many self-satisfied bourgeois. It was just a village in the woods. You did find a handful of rural retreats from the past century dotted around, recognizable by their grand air, their wrought-iron balconies, and those long windows with small square panes that show up as all kinds of different greens against the white of the closed shutters. But Montfermeil was no less a village for all that. The retired drapers and certified holiday makers had not yet discovered it. It was a quiet charming place on the road to nowhere; you could live the incredibly bountiful and easy life of a peasant there, cheaply. Only water was scarce because the plateau was so high.

You had to go quite a way to get it. The part of the village on the Gagny side drew its water from the glorious ponds in the woods; but the other end, surrounding the church on the Chelles side, only found drinking water at a little spring halfway up a hill close to the Chelles road, about a quarter of an hour away from Montfermeil.

So it was pretty tough going for each household to get its water supply. The great houses, the aristocracy—and the Thénardier dive was part of this—paid a liard,1 or a farthing, a bucket to a man whose profession it was and who pulled in about eight sous a day from this Montfermeil waterworks; but this man only worked till seven o’clock at night in summer and five o’clock in winter, and once night had come on, once the ground-floor shutters were shut, anyone who didn’t have any water to drink went and looked for it elsewhere or went without.

This was the terror of that poor creature that the reader has perhaps not forgotten—little Cosette. You will remember that Cosette was useful to the Thénardiers in two ways. They got themselves paid by the mother and waited on by the child. So when the mother stopped paying entirely, and we have just learned why in the preceding chapters, the Thénardiers hung on to Cosette. She saved them a servant. In this capacity, it was she who ran after water when it was needed. And so the child, who was absolutely horrified at the idea of going to the spring at night, made very sure that the house was never without water.

The Christmas of the year 1823 was particularly sparkling at Montfermeil. The beginning of winter had been mild; so far, there had been no frost or snow. Some tumblers from Paris had obtained permission from the mayor to set up their stands in the main street of the village, and a bunch of street peddlers were also allowed, by the same token, to erect their stalls on the church square and round as far as the ruelle du Boulanger, where, as perhaps you will recall, the Thénardiers’ pothouse was located. This filled the inns and taverns and shook the quiet little backwater up with a lot of joyful noise. We should, as faithful historians, also add that among the curiosities on show in the square, there was a menagerie in which hideous barkers, dressed in rags and from heaven only knows where, showed the peasants of Montfermeil in 1823 one of those dreadful vultures from Brazil that our Royal Museum only acquired in 1845 and that have a tricolour cockade for an eye. Naturalists, I believe, call this bird Caracara polyborus; it belongs to the Apicidae order and the vulture family. A few good old retired Bonapartist soldiers of the village went to see the bird religiously. The tumblers boasted that the tricolour cockade was a unique phenomenon, one made by God expressly for their menagerie.

On Christmas Eve itself, several men, carters and peddlers, were sitting at table, drinking, ranged around four or five candles in the low room of the Thénardiers’ inn. This room looked like every other tavern room; tables, pewter pitchers, bottles, drinkers, smokers; not much light, lots of noise. The year 1823 was, however, indicated by two objects that were in vogue at the time with the middle class and were sitting on a table, to wit, a kaleidoscope and an iridescent tin lamp. Mother Thénardier was taking care of supper, which was roasting over a good strong fire; old man Thénardier was drinking with his customers and talking politics.

Apart from the political chitchat, the main topics of which were the Spanish War and Monsieur le duc d’Angoulême, you could hear in the racket perfectly local brackets such as these: “Around Nanterre and Suresnes they’ve had a good yield of wine. Where they were counting on ten casks, they’re getting twelve. That’s a lot of juice shooting out of the press.” “But the grapes can’t have been ripe?” “Over that way, you don’t pick the grapes ripe. If you pick ‘em ripe, the wine turns oily come spring.” “It’s all light wine, then?” “It’s all even lighter wines than around here. You’ve got to pick ‘em green.” And so on.

Or else, some miller might be carrying on: “Are we responsible for what’s in the sacks? We find a heap of tiny seeds in them and we haven’t got time to amuse ourselves picking ‘em out, so of course we have to let ‘em go under the millstones; there’s rye grass, there’s alfalfa, corn cockle, common vetch, hempseed, foxtail, love-lies-bleeding, and a lot of other stuff, not counting the pebbles that collect in certain types of wheat, especially in Breton wheat. I don’t like milling Breton wheat one bit, any more than carpenters like sawing boards with nails in ‘em. Just think of all the nasty dust that adds to the yield. And then they complain about the flour. It’s not right. The flour isn’t our fault.” In a space between two windows, a reaper, sitting at a table with a landowner who was trying to get a good price for work to be done on a meadow in the spring, said: “There’s nothing wrong with the grass being wet. It cuts better. Dew is good, Monsieur. It doesn’t make any difference—that grass, your grass, is young and pretty hard to cut. ‘Cause it’s so tender, it bends under the scythe.” And so on … Cosette was in her usual spot, sitting on the crosspiece of the kitchen table next to the fireplace. She was in rags, her feet were bare in her clogs, and she was knitting woolen stockings intended for the little Thénardier girls by the light of the fire. A tiny kitten was playing under the chairs. Two fresh children’s voices could be heard laughing and babbling in a neighbouring room; that was Éponine and Azelma.

In the corner of the fireplace, a leather strap hung from a nail.

At intervals, the cry of a very young child, who was somewhere in the house, broke through the ambient noise of the tavern. This was a little boy mother Thénardier had had a few winters back—“heaven knows why,” she said, “must have been the cold weather”—and who was now a little over three years old. The mother had fed him, but did not love him. When the little nipper’s fierce clamour got too much: “Your son’s squealing,” Thénardier would say. “Go and see what he wants, then.” “Bah!” mother Thénardier would reply. “I’m sick to death of him.” And the abandoned little boy would go on crying in the dark.

TWO PORTRAITS COMPLETED

SO FAR IN this book we have only seen the Thénardiers in profile; the moment has come to circle the couple and look at them from all sides.

Thénardier had just turned fifty. Madame Thénardier was hitting her forties, which is the fifties for a woman, so husband and wife were evenly matched in age.

The reader has, perhaps, retained some image of this Thénardier woman, since she first appeared, tall, blond, ruddy, barrel-like, brawny, boxy, huge, and agile; she belonged, as we said, to that race of colossal wild women who arch their backs at fairs with cobblestones hanging from their hair. She did everything around the place, the beds, the rooms, the washing, the cooking, whatever, she ruled the roost and called all the shots. The only servant she had was Cosette, a mouse at the service of an elephant. Everything trembled at the sound of her voice, the windows, the furniture, people. Her broad face, covered in freckles, looked like a strainer. She had a bit of a beard. She was the ideal butcher’s boy dressed up as a girl. She swore like a trooper; she boasted of being able to crack a nut with a single blow. If it hadn’t been for the novels she had read, which, at times, bizarrely brought out the snooty little prude beneath the ogress, the idea of calling her a woman would never have occurred to anyone. Mother Thénardier was like a damsel grafted onto a fishwife. To hear her speak, you’d say a gendarme; to see her knock it back, you’d say a carter; to see the way she treated Cosette, you’d say a torturer. When she was resting, a tooth protruded from her mouth.

Old man Thénardier was a skinny little runt, pale, angular, bony, rickety, who looked sick but was as fit as a fiddle; his deceitfulness started there. He habitually smiled as a precaution and was polite with nearly everyone, even with the beggar to whom he would not give a whit. He had the eyes of a weasel and the mien of a man of letters. He looked a lot like the portraits of the abbé Delille.1 He liked to show off by drinking with the carters. No one had ever been able to get him drunk—he could drink anyone under the table. He smoked a great big pipe. He wore a smock and under the smock an old black outfit. He had pretensions to literature and to materialism as a philosophy. There were names he often uttered to support whatever he happened to be saying—Voltaire, Raynal, Parny, and, oddly, Saint Augustine.2 He claimed to have “a system.” Otherwise, he was a real swindler. A filousophe, a fowlosopher, or a crook and a philosopher rolled into one. Such a nuance exists. You will recall that he pretended he had served in the army; with a good deal of embellishment, he would tell how, at Waterloo, being a sergeant in a 6th or a 9th Light something-or-other, he alone, against a squadron of Hussars of Death, had covered “a dangerously wounded general” with his body, saving him from grapeshot. Whence the blazing sign for his wall and, for his inn, throughout the region, the name of “the sergeant of Waterloo’s tavern.” He was liberal, traditional, and Bonapartist. He had put in for the Champ d’Asile fund.3 They reckoned in the village that he had once studied to be a priest.

We believe he had simply studied in Holland to be an innkeeper. This mongrel of very mixed blood was, in all probability, some kind of Fleming from Lille in Flanders, French in Paris, Belgian in Brussels, conveniently straddling two borders, with a foot in both camps. His prowess at Waterloo, we know about. As we see, he exaggerated a little. Drifting with the current, meandering, randomly trying his luck, this was the element of his existence; a divided conscience leads to a disjointed life, and most likely, in those stormy days that came to a head around June 18, 1815, Thénardier belonged to that species of marauding camp followers we were talking about earlier, a two-bit hustler, selling to some, stealing from others, and rolling along with the family, man, woman, and children, in some boneshaker of a cariole, in the wake of troops on the march, with a nose for the victorious army, to which he never failed to latch on. That campaign over, having, as he said, made a bundle, he had opened a pothouse in Montfermeil.

This “bundle,” composed of purses and watches, gold rings and silver crosses, harvested from among the furrows sown with corpses, did not amount to much and was not enough to take this sutler turned greasy-spoon-keeper all that far.

Thénardier had something stiff in his movements, which reminded you of the barracks when he swore or of the seminary when he made the sign of the cross. He was a good talker. He let people think he was well educated. Nonetheless, the schoolmaster had noticed that he made “howlers.” He composed traveller’s bills in a superior manner, but a practised eye could spot the odd spelling mistake. Thénardier was sly, greedy, lazy, and cunning. He did not disdain servant girls and so his wife did not have any anymore. That giant of a woman was jealous. In her view this skinny sallow little runt was the object of universal desire.

Thénardier, above all a man of astuteness and balance, was a scoundrel of the mild-mannered kind. This breed is the worst, for in them hypocrisy joins in.

It was not that Thénardier was not just as capable of rage as his wife on occasion; but this was very rare, and at those moments, since he resented the whole human race and contained inside him a furnace of hate, being one of those people who are always getting revenge, who blame anyone in the vicinity for anything that befalls them and are always ready to throw the sum of all the disappointments, failures, and calamities of their life at the first comer as a legitimate grievance—as all this leavening rose in him and foamed out of his mouth and into his eyes, he was truly ghastly. Woe to anyone who happened to be within arm’s reach then!

Apart from all his other qualities, Thénardier was watchful and sharp, silent or occasionally chatty, and highly intelligent at all times. He had something of the look of the mariner accustomed to squinting into a spyglass. Thénardier was a statesman.

Every newcomer who entered the greasy spoon said when they saw mother Thénardier: There’s the master of the house; she’s the one who wears the trousers. Wrong. She was not even the mistress; the husband was master and mistress. She performed, he directed. He directed everything by a sort of invisible and continual magnetic action. A word was enough, sometimes a sign; the mastodon obeyed. Thénardier the man was for Thénardier the woman, without her fully realizing it, a species of weird and wonderful being. She had the virtues of her order of creation; never would she have differed in any detail with “Monsieur Thénardier,” nor—this was an unthinkable hypothesis—would she have disagreed with her husband in public over any matter whatsoever. Never would she have committed, “in front of strangers,” the mistake women so often make and which in parliamentary parlance is known as “unmasking the crown.” Although their accord resulted in nothing but evil, there was admiration in mother Thénardier’s submission to her husband. This mountain of flesh and fury moved when that frail little despot wagged his little finger. From his stunted and grotesque perspective, it amounted to this great universal: the worship of mind by matter; for certain ugly deformities have their raison d’être in the very depths of eternal beauty. There was something unknowable about Thénardier the man, whence his absolute hold over the woman. At certain moments, she saw him as a burning candle; at others, she felt him as a claw.

That woman was a formidable creature who loved only her children and feared only her husband. She was a mother only because she was a mammal. Besides, her maternal feelings stopped at her girls, and, as we will see, did not extend to boys. As for the man, he had only one thought: how to get rich quick.

He did not succeed. This great talent lacked a worthy theatre. In Montfermeil, Thénardier was ruining himself, if ruin is possible when you are starting from nothing; in Switzerland or the Pyrenees, this pauper would have become a millionaire. But wherever fate sets down the innkeeper, there must he graze.

You will understand that the term innkeeper is used here in a limited sense and does not extend to a whole class.

In this same year, 1823, Thénardier owed around fifteen hundred francs in pressing debts, which made him fretful.

However doggedly unjust fate may have been toward him, Thénardier was one of those men who most appreciated, most profoundly and in the most modern way, something that is a virtue among barbarians and an item of merchandise among civilized peoples—hospitality. On top of this, he was an impressive poacher and renowned as an excellent shot. He had a certain cold, quiet laugh that was particularly dangerous.

His theories as an innkeeper sometimes shot out of him in flashes. He had a stock of professional aphorisms that he drilled into the mind of his wife. “The duty of the innkeeper,” he said to her one day, sotto voce but with considerable vehemence, “is to sell whoever happens to come along grub, rest, light, fire, dirty sheets, a bit of the servant, fleas, a bit of a smile; to stop passersby, to empty small purses and to honestly lighten big fat ones; to respectfully shelter families on the move, to fleece the man, pluck the woman, skin the child; to charge for an open window, a closed window, the fireside nook, the armchair, the chair, the stool, the kitchen steps, the feather bed, the horsehair mattress, and the bale of straw; to know how much the dark wears out the mirror and to charge for that, and, come hell or high water, to make the traveller pay for everything, right down to the flies his dog gobbles up!” That man and that woman were cunning and rage wedded together, a hideous and terrible coupling.

While the husband plotted and schemed, mother Thénardier, for her part, did not give the absent creditors a thought, did not worry about the day before or the day after, living furiously entirely in the moment.

So much for those two creatures. Cosette was caught between them, suffering their double pressure as though at once ground by a millstone and torn to shreds by pincers. The man and the woman each had a different style. Cosette was beaten to a pulp, courtesy of the woman; she went barefoot in winter, courtesy of the man.

Cosette clambered upstairs, ran downstairs, washed, brushed, rubbed, swept, raced about, slaved away, puffed and panted, lifted heavy things, and, puny as she was, did all the rough work. Not a shred of pity; a savage mistress, a venomous master. The Thénardier dive was like a web in which Cosette was caught, trembling. The ideal of oppression had been achieved in this sinister domesticity. It was a bit like a fly serving spiders.

The poor little girl was passive and kept her mouth shut.

When little girls find themselves in such a situation, at the dawn of their lives, so small, so naked, among men, what goes on in their souls, so fresh from God?

MEN MUST HAVE WINE AND HORSES WATER

FOUR NEW TRAVELLERS had turned up.

Cosette was dreaming forlornly, for, although she was only eight years old, she had already suffered so much that she dreamed with the mournful air of an old woman.

She had a black eye from a punch she had collected from mother Thénardier, which caused mother Thénardier to say now and again: “Talk about ugly, with that poached egg over her eye!” Cosette, then, was thinking that it was dark, very dark, that the glasses and carafes in the rooms of the travellers who had suddenly appeared had to be filled immediately and that there was no water left in the household urn.

She was somewhat reassured by the fact that not a lot of water got drunk in the Thénardier household. There was no shortage of thirsty people around, but it was the kind of thirst that reaches more readily for the bottle than the water jug. Anyone asking for a glass of water among all those glasses of wine would have looked like a savage to those men. Yet there was a moment when the child quaked: Mother Thénardier lifted the lid on a pot that was boiling away on the stove, then grabbed a glass and dashed off toward the water urn. She turned on the tap; the child had lifted her head and was following her every move. A thin trickle of water ran from the tap only to fill the glass half-full.

“Damn!” she said. “There’s no more water!”

Then she was quiet for a moment. The child did not breathe.

“Bah!” mother Thénardier went on, examining the half-full glass, “this’ll have to do.” Cosette resumed her work, but for more than fifteen minutes she felt her heart skipping in her chest like a great snowflake. She counted the minutes as they ticked away and wished for all she was worth that it was the next morning.

Now and again one of the drinkers would look out at the street and exclaim: “It’s as black as an oven!” Or, “You’d have to be a cat to be out on the street tonight without a lantern!” And Cosette would shudder.

All of a sudden, one of the peddlers who lodged in the tavern came in and said in a hard voice: “No one’s watered my horse.” “Of course we have,” said mother Thénardier.

“I say you haven’t, missus,” retorted the merchant.

Cosette had come out from under the table.

“Oh, yes we have, Monsieur!” she said. “The horse drank, all right, he drank from the bucket, a full bucket, I know ‘cause it was me who took him the water and I talked to him and everything.” This was not true. Cosette was lying.

“Here’s a girl no bigger than my fist and who can tell a whopper as big as a house!” cried the merchant. “I tell you he hasn’t had anything to drink, you little rascal. He has a way of snorting when he hasn’t had anything to drink that I know only too well.” Cosette persisted, adding in a barely audible voice, hoarse with anguish: “But he even drank a lot!” “Come, come,” said the merchant, angry now, “that’s enough of that, get my horse some water and there’s an end to it!” Cosette dived back under the table.

“Actually, that’s right,” said mother Thénardier. “If the beast hasn’t had anything to drink, she’s got to have a drink.” Then she looked around: “All right, where’s that kid?”

She bent down and spotted Cosette huddled at the far end of the table, almost under the drinkers’ feet.

“Come out of there!” cried mother Thénardier.

Cosette emerged from the nook in which she had been hiding. Mother Thénardier went on: “Mademoiselle Dog-for-want-of-a-better-name, go and get the horse something to drink.” “But, Madame,” Cosette said feebly, “it’s just that there is no water.”

Mother Thénardier flung the door to the street wide open.

“Well, then, you’ll have to go and get some!”

Cosette hung her head and went to get an empty bucket sitting in the corner of the fireplace. The bucket was bigger than she was and the child could easily have sat in it with room to spare.

Mother Thénardier went back to her stove and tasted what was in the pot with a wooden spoon, grumbling all the while: “There’s some at the spring. They don’t come any slyer than that one. I think I’d have done better to skip the onions.” Then she fumbled about in a drawer where there were some coins, pepper, and shallots.

“Here, Little Miss Toad,” she added. “On the way back you can get me a big loaf at the baker’s. Here’s a fifteen-sou piece.” Cosette had a small side pocket in her smock; she took the piece without a word and put it in her pocket.

Then she stood rooted to the spot, bucket in hand, the open door in front of her. She seemed to be waiting for someone to come to her rescue.

“Off you go!” cried mother Thénardier.

Cosette went out. The door shut behind her.

A DOLL MAKES ITS ENTRANCE

THE ROW OF shops exposed to the wind that started at the church extended, as you will recall, right to the Thénardiers’ tavern. These shops, because of all the good burghers who would shortly be passing on their way to midnight mass, were all lit up with candles burning in funnel-shaped paper holders, which, as the schoolmaster of Montfermeil said as he sat at a table at the Thénardiers’ at that very moment, created “a magical effect.” On the other hand, not a star was to be seen in the sky.

The last of these stalls, set up exactly opposite the Thénardiers’ door, was a fancy goods shop, all glittering with tinsel and flashy beading, glass trinkets and magnificent things made of tin. In the first row, out in front, against a backdrop of white towels, the merchant had placed a huge doll nearly two feet tall that was dressed in a pink crepe frock and had golden ears of wheat on its head and real hair and enamel eyes. All day this marvel had been on show to the great bedazzlement of passersby under ten, without there apparently being a mother rich enough or extravagant enough in Montfermeil to give it to her child. Éponine and Azelma had spent hours contemplating it and Cosette herself, furtively it is true, had dared to cast a glance at it.

As Cosette went out, bucket in hand, forlorn and stricken as she was, she could not help herself from lifting her eyes to this wonderful doll, “the lady,” as she called it. The poor child stopped in her tracks, petrified. She had not yet seen the doll up close. The whole shop seemed like a palace to her; the doll was not a doll, it was a vision. It was joy, splendour, wealth, happiness that appeared in a kind of dreamlike radiance to this unhappy little being so deeply swamped by a cold and dismal misery. With that sad and naïve sagacity of childhood, Cosette measured the abyss that separated her from the doll. She told herself you’d have to be a queen or at least a princess to have a thing like that. She studied the beautiful pink frock, the beautiful silky hair, and she thought: “How happy she must be, that doll!” She could not take her eyes off the fabulous boutique. The more she looked, the more dazzled she was. She believed she was seeing paradise. There were other dolls behind the big one that looked to her like fairies and sprites. The merchant pacing back and forth at the back of his stall had a bit of the effect on her of the Eternal Father.

In her adoration, she forgot everything, even the job she had been landed with. All of a sudden, the harsh voice of mother Thénardier brought her back to reality: “You little twirp! Are you still here? Wait there, I’m on my way! I’d like to know what she thinks she’s doing there! You little monster, get going!” Mother Thénardier had glanced out at the street and seen Cosette in ecstasy.

Cosette ran off with her bucket as fast as her legs would carry her.

A LITTLE GIRL ALL ON HER OWN

AS THE THÉNARDIER inn was in the part of the village that was nearest the church, it was to the spring in the woods on the Chelles side that Cosette had to go to draw water.

She did not look at a single merchant’s display on the way. As long as she was in the ruelle du Boulanger and in the vicinity of the church, the illuminated shops lit the way, but soon the last lights of the last stall disappeared. The poor child found herself in darkness. She plunged on. Only, as a certain emotion overcame her, she rattled the handle of the bucket for all she was worth as she walked. The noise this made kept her company.

The farther she went, the thicker the darkness became. There was no longer a soul anywhere on the street. And yet, she met a woman who turned round when she saw her go by and stopped, mumbling between her lips: “Where on earth can that child be going? Is it a baby werewolf?” Then the woman recognized Cosette. “Of course!” she said. “It’s the Lark!” Cosette walked down the labyrinth of crooked deserted streets that ends the village of Montfermeil on the Chelles side. As long as she had houses and even just walls on both sides of the road, she trotted along boldly enough. Now and again, she saw the light of a candle beaming through the crack in a shutter and that was light and life to her, it meant there were people there and this reassured her. But the farther she went, the more her pace slowed, as though by itself. When she had turned the corner of the last house, Cosette stopped dead. To go beyond the last shop had been hard; to go farther than the last house—that was becoming impossible. She put the bucket on the ground, stuck her hand in her hair and began to slowly scratch her head, a gesture peculiar to children who are terrified and undecided. It was no longer Montfermeil, it was the open country. Dark and deserted space lay before her. She looked in despair at the darkness where there was no one now, where there were animals, where there were perhaps ghosts. She looked hard, and she heard animals walking in the grass and distinctly saw ghosts stirring in the trees. So she picked up her bucket and fear made her reckless: “Bah!” she said. “I’ll tell her there is no more water!” And she returned resolutely to Montfermeil.

Scarcely had she gone a hundred paces when she stopped again and went back to scratching her head. Now it was mother Thénardier who appeared to her; hideous mother Thénardier with her hyena mouth and rage blazing in her eyes. The child cast a pitiful glance in front and behind. What could she do? What would become of her? Where could she go? Before her, the spectre of mother Thénardier; behind her all the ghosts of the night and the woods. It was in the face of mother Thénardier that she shrank back. She turned back to the spring road and began to run. She ran out of the village and she ran into the woods, not looking anywhere, not hearing anything. She only stopped running when she ran out of breath but even then, she did not stop walking. She put one foot in front of the other and continued straight ahead, frantic.

As she was running, she wanted to cry.

The nocturnal rustling of the forest enveloped her completely. She could no longer think, she could no longer see. The vast night confronted this tiny being. On one side, endless shadow; on the other, an atom.

It was only seven or eight minutes from the clearing in the woods to the spring. Cosette knew the way from having done the trip fairly often during the day. What was strange was that she did not get lost. A residual instinct guided her vaguely. But she did not glance to left or right for fear of seeing things in the branches of the trees or in the bushes. And so she made it to the spring.

This was a narrow natural basin, carved by the water through soil thick with clay, about two feet deep, surrounded by moss and that tall crimped grass known as “Henri IV’s ruffs,” and it was paved with a few large stones. A stream trickled out of it with a tranquil sound.

Cosette did not pause for breath. It was very black, but she was used to coming to the fountain. She searched in the dark with her left hand for a young oak bent over the spring that normally served her as support, found a branch, hung from it, lunged down and plunged the bucket in the spring. She was so worked up at that moment that her strength was as the strength of three. While she was leaning over in this position, she did not notice that the pocket of her smock was emptying itself into the spring. The fifteen-sou coin fell into the drink. Cosette neither saw nor heard it fall in. She pulled the bucket out almost full to the brim and plonked it on the grass.

That done, she realized she was completely overcome with exhaustion. She would naturally have liked to take off immediately, but the effort of filling the bucket had been so great she simply could not take a step. She just had to sit down. She plopped on the grass and stayed there, squatting. She closed her eyes, then opened them again, without knowing why, but without being able to do otherwise.

By her side, the water swirling in the bucket made circles that looked like snakes of white fire.

Over her head, the sky was covered in huge black clouds that were like palls of smoke. The tragic mask of shadow seemed to imperceptibly lean over the child.

Jupiter was setting in the depths of the sky.

The child looked wild-eyed at that great star, which she did not know and which frightened her. The planet was, in fact, very close to the horizon at that moment and passed through a thick layer of mist that gave it a horrible red colour. The mist, lugubriously flushed with crimson, made the star bigger. You would have said it was a luminous wound.

A cold wind blew off the plain. The woods were murky, without any rustling of leaves, without any of those soft fresh glimmers of summer. Great branches rose up hideously. Spindly warped bushes whistled in the glades. The tall grasses writhed beneath the icy gusts like eels. The brambles twisted like long arms trying to snatch their prey in their claws; dry heather, driven by the wind, whipped past as though fleeing in terror from something coming. On every side were gloomy expanses.

The dark is dizzying. Man needs light. Whoever burrows into the opposite of daylight feels their heart lurch. When the eye sees black, the mind sees trouble. In an eclipse, in the night, in sooty opacity, there is anxiety, even in the heartiest. No one can walk alone through the forest at night without trembling. Shadows and trees form two fearful densities. A chimerical reality appears in the indistinct depths. The inconceivable takes shape a few steps away from you with a spectral clarity. You see floating, in space or in your own mind, something as strangely vague and elusive as the dreams of sleeping flowers. Ferocious things lurk on the horizon. You breathe in the effluvia of the great black void. You both want, and are frightened, to look behind you. The gaping holes opening up in the night, things that now look crazed, flinty profiles that break up as you approach, murky unbridled movements, churned-up tufts, livid puddles, the mournful reflected in the funereal, the sepulchral immensity of the silence, possible unknown beings, weirdly leaning branches, frighteningly twisting trees, long fistfuls of shivering grass—you are defenceless against all of it. No one is so hardy they don’t flinch and feel themselves on the verge of anguish. You feel a ghastly sensation as though your soul were mingling with the shadows. This penetration by the darkness is unspeakably sinister for a child.

Forests are apocalypses; and the beating of a little soul’s wings makes an agonizing sound under their monstrous vault.

Without understanding what she was going through, Cosette felt gripped by the black enormity of nature. It was no longer merely terror that took hold of her but something even more terrible than terror. She was shivering. Words cannot describe the strangeness of the shiver that chilled her to the bottom of her heart. Her eyes had become wild. She had a feeling that she might not be able to stop herself from going back there at the same time the following night.

So, out of a sort of instinct, to snap out of this odd state that she did not understand but that terrified her, she began to count out loud, one, two, three, four, up to ten, and when she had finished, she started again. This brought her back to her senses so that she could see the things around her for what they really were. Her hands, which she had got wet drawing the water, felt cold. She stood up. Fear had returned to her, a natural and insurmountable fear. She had only one thought and that was to run; to run as fast as her legs would carry her, through the woods, through the fields, till she reached houses, windows, burning candles. Her gaze fell on the bucket in front of her. Such was the fright that mother Thénardier inspired in her that she dared not run without the bucket of water. She grabbed the handle with both hands. She could hardly lift the bucket.

She took a dozen steps like this, but the bucket was full, it was heavy, she was forced to put it down again. She got her breath back for a moment, lifted the handle again and started walking once more, this time for a little longer. But she had to stop again. After a few seconds’ rest, she set off again. She walked bent forward with her head down like an old woman. The weight of the bucket strained and stiffened her skinny little arms. The iron handle numbed and froze her tiny wet hands; from time to time she was forced to stop, and each time she stopped cold water slopped out of the bucket and splashed over her bare legs. This was happening in the depths of a wood, at night, in winter, far from all human eyes; she was an eight-year-old child. Only God could see this sad sight at that moment.

And doubtless her mother, too, more’s the pity! For there are some things that cause dead women to open their eyes in their graves.

She breathed with a kind of painful rasp; sobs choked her throat, but she dared not cry, she was so frightened of mother Thénardier, even at a distance. It was her habit at all times to imagine that mother Thénardier was there.

But she could not make much headway the way she was going and her progress was painfully slow. It was no use trying to shorten the breaks and to walk as far as possible between them; it would take her more than an hour to get back to Montfermeil this way, and mother Thénardier would give her a belting. This anguish melded with the horror she felt at being alone in the woods at night. She was worn out with exhaustion and not yet out of the woods. Having reached an old chestnut tree she knew, she made one last stop longer than the others to have a proper rest, then she gathered all her strength, grabbed the bucket and courageously set off walking again. But the poor little mite could not stop herself from crying out in her despair: “Oh, my God! My God!” At that moment, she suddenly felt that the bucket no longer weighed a thing. A hand, which seemed to her enormous, had just seized the handle and lifted it vigorously. She raised her head. A big black shape, straight and tall, was walking beside her in the darkness. It was a man, who had come up behind her without her hearing him coming. This man, without saying a word, had grabbed hold of the handle of the bucket she was carrying.

There are instincts for all life’s encounters. The little girl felt no fear.

WHICH PERHAPS PROVES BOULATRUELLE’S INTELLIGENCE

DURING THE AFTERNOON of this same Christmas Eve of 1823, a man had been strolling up and down the deserted part of the boulevard de l’Hôpital in Paris for quite some time. This man looked like someone looking for a place to stay and seemed to stop by choice at the most humble houses along this dilapidated outer reach of the faubourg Saint-Marceau.1 We will see below that the man did, in fact, rent a room in this isolated quartier.

In his dress as in his whole person, the man embodied the archetype of what we might call the genteel beggar, combining extreme poverty with extreme propriety. This is a rather rare mix that inspires, in intelligent hearts, the twin respect we feel for a person who is extremely poor and for one who is extremely dignified. He was wearing a very old and very much brushed round hat, a completely threadbare redingote made of coarse yellow ochre cotton, a colour not too odd at the time, a big waistcoat with pockets in a thoroughly outmoded cut, black breeches that had gone grey at the knees, black wool stockings, and heavy shoes with copper buckles. You would have said he looked like an old private tutor from a good house back home from the emigration. Going by his completely white hair, his wrinkled forehead, his pale lips, his face, all of which conveyed dejection and world-weariness, you would have put his age at well over sixty. But going by his firm, if slow, gait, by the unusual virility that marked his movements, you would have put it at fifty, if that. The wrinkles on his forehead were in the right place and would have biased in his favour anyone paying him particular attention. His lips were contracted in a strange crease that looked severe but was actually humble. Deep in his eyes there was some indefinably grim serenity. In his left hand he was carrying a small parcel knotted into a handkerchief and with his right, he was leaning on a kind of stick cut from a hedge. The stick had been worked with some care and did not look too nasty; the knots had been turned into a feature and a coral knob had been made out of red wax; it was a cudgel, yet it looked like a cane.

There aren’t many people out walking on this boulevard, especially in winter. The man appeared to steer clear of them rather than seek them out, though without making this too obvious.

In those days, King Louis XVIII went nearly every day to Choisy-le-Roi. It was one of his favourite promenades. At around two o’clock, almost invariably, you would see his carriage and the royal cavalcade stream past furiously on the boulevard de l’Hôpital.

This was as good as a watch and a clock for the poor women of the quartier who would say: “It’s two o’clock, there he is heading back to the Tuileries.” Some would come running and others would line the roadside; for a passing king always creates a commotion. Besides, the appearance and disappearance of Louis XVIII created certain waves on the streets of Paris. It was fast, but majestic. This impotent king liked a good gallop; not being able to walk, he liked to run; that legless cripple would gladly have had himself pulled by lightning. He passed, pacific and stern, between bare sabres. His massive berlin,2 gilded all over with big bundles of lilies painted on the sides, made a great racket as it rolled past. You hardly had time to catch a glimpse of it. You could just see, in the right-hand corner at the back, on padded white satin cushions, a broad face, firm and rosy, a forehead freshly powdered à l’oiseau royal, an eye proud, hard, and keen, a scholar’s smile,3 two great braided epaulets floating on a bourgeois frockcoat, the Golden Fleece, the cross of Saint Louis, the cross of the Légion d’honour, the silver medal of the Holy Spirit, a fat gut, and a wide blue sash:4 This was the king. Outside Paris, he kept his white feather hat on his knees, which were swaddled in high English gaiters; when he returned to town, he stuck his hat back on his head, greeting few. He looked on the people coldly and they returned his look. When he appeared for the first time in the quartier Saint-Marceau, all he succeeded in doing was to solicit these words from a local: “That fat pig runs the place.” This unfailing passage of the king at the same hour was thus the big daily event of the boulevard de l’Hôpital.

The rambler in the yellow redingote was clearly not from the neighbourhood and probably not from Paris, either, for he was ignorant of this detail. When at two o’clock the royal carriage, surrounded by a squadron of silver-trimmed guards of the royal corps, came into the boulevard after skirting around La Salpêtrière hospital, he appeared startled and almost alarmed. He was the only person in the side street and he leaped back behind a recess in the enclosure wall, though this did not prevent Monsieur le duc d’Havré from spotting him. Monsieur le duc d’Havré,5 as captain of the guards on duty that day, was sitting in the carriage opposite the king. He said to His Majesty: “There’s a man with a mean mug for you.” The policemen who were clearing the king’s passage also noticed him and one of them was given the order to follow him. But the man melted away into the lonely little backstreets of the faubourg and as the light was beginning to fade, the officer lost all trace of him, as is noted in a report addressed that same evening to Monsieur le comte d’Anglès,6 minister of state, prefect of police.

When the man in the yellow redingote had shaken off the police officer, he doubled back, though not without turning round many times to make sure he was not being followed. At a quarter past four, that is, when night had fallen, he went past the Porte Saint-Martin theatre, where the play they were putting on that day was The Two Convicts.7 The poster, lit up by the lights of the theatre, struck him even though he was walking fast, and he stopped to read it. An instant later, he was in the cul-de-sac of La Planchette and he went into the Plat d’étain—the Pewter Dish, where the office of the Lagny coach was then located. This coach left at four-thirty. The horses were hitched and the travellers, summoned by the coach driver, were busily clambering up the steep iron steps of the clapped-out crate.

The man asked: “Do you have a seat?”

“Just one, next to me, up on the box,” said the driver.

“I’ll take it.”

“Climb up.”

But before starting off, the driver shot a glance at the traveller’s mediocre getup, at the smallness of his bundle, and made sure he got the money up front.

“Are you going as far as Lagny?” the driver asked him.

“Yes,” said the man.

The traveller paid the Lagny fare.

Off they went. When they had passed the barrière, the driver tried to start up a conversation, but the traveller answered only in monosyllables. The driver decided to whistle and to swear at his horses instead.

The driver wrapped himself up in his coat. It was cold. The man did not appear to notice. And so they went through Gournay and Neuilly-sur-Marne.

At around six o’clock in the evening they had reached Chelles. The driver stopped to let his horses have a breather in front of an inn for carters set up in the old buildings of the royal abbey.

“I’ll get down here,” said the man.

He took his bundle and his stick and jumped down from the coach. An instant later he had disappeared. He had not gone into the inn.

When, a few minutes later, the coach set off again for Lagny, they did not meet up with him on the main street of Chelles.

The coach driver turned to the passengers inside the coach.

“Now, there’s a man,” he said, “who’s not from around here—I certainly don’t know him. He doesn’t look like he has a sou to his name, yet money means nothing to him; he pays for Lagny and he only goes as far as Chelles. It’s night, all the houses are shut, he doesn’t go into the inn, and we don’t set eyes on him again. He must have sunk into the ground.” The man had not sunk into the ground, but he had swiftly paced up and down the main street of Chelles in the dark; then he had swung to the left before going as far as the church and taking the back road that leads to Montfermeil, quite as though he had been there before and knew the area.

He moved quickly down this road. At the spot where it intersects with the old road bordered with trees that goes from Gagny to Lagny he heard footsteps coming his way. He swiftly hid in a ditch and waited till the people walking past were a long way off. This precaution was more or less superfluous in any case, since, as we have already said, it was a very black December night. You were lucky to make out two or three stars in the sky.

It is at this point that the hill starts to climb. The man did not return to the Montfermeil road; he turned right and bounded across the fields till he reached the woods.

When he was in the woods, he slowed his pace and began to look carefully at all the trees, taking one step at a time, as though he were searching for and following a path known only to himself. There was a moment when he seemed to lose his way and when he stopped, undecided. At last he arrived, groping all the way, at a clearing where there was a mound of big whitish stones. He hurried over to the stones and examined them attentively in the night fog, as though he were formally inspecting them. A huge tree, covered in those excrescences that are the warts of vegetation, stood a few feet away from the heap of stones. He went to the tree and ran his hand over the bark of the trunk as if he were trying to recognize and count all the warts.

Opposite the tree, which was an ash, there was a chestnut tree that was losing its bark through some disease and that had a strip of zinc nailed on as a bandage. He stood on tiptoe and touched the band of zinc.

Then he stamped for some little time on the ground in the space bounded by the tree and the stones, as though making sure the ground had not been freshly dug.

That done, he got his bearings and resumed walking through the woods.

It was this man who had just stumbled on Cosette.

As he weaved through the thicket in the direction of Montfermeil, he had spotted this little shadow, struggling along groaning, dumping its burden on the ground, then picking it up again and walking on. He had approached and registered that it was a very young child, loaded with an enormous bucket of water. So he had gone up to the child and silently taken the handle of the bucket.

COSETTE SIDE BY SIDE WITH THE STRANGER IN THE DARK

COSETTE, AS WE have said, had not felt frightened. The man spoke to her. He spoke in a grave voice, almost a whisper.

“My child, that is quite a load you’re carrying there, for you.”

Cosette lifted her head and replied: “Yes, Monsieur.”

“Give it to me,” the man went on. “I’ll carry it for you.”

Cosette let go of the bucket. The man began to walk along by her side.

“It is incredibly heavy, actually,” he said between clenched teeth. Then he added: “How old are you, little girl?” “Eight, Monsieur.”

“And have you come some distance with this?”

“I’ve come from the spring in the woods.”

“And do you have far to go?”

“It’s a good quarter of an hour from here.”

The man didn’t say anything more for a while, then he said suddenly: “Don’t you have a mother, then?” “I don’t know,” replied the little girl.

Before the man had time to say another word, she added: “I don’t think so. Others have one. Me, I don’t have one.” And after a pause, she went on: “I don’t think I ever had one.”

The man stopped, put the bucket on the ground, bent down and placed his hands on the little girl’s shoulders, trying hard to look at her and see her face in the darkness. Cosette’s thin and puny silhouette took shape in the livid light of the sky.

“What is your name?” the man asked.

“Cosette.”

The man felt something like an electric shock. He looked at Cosette again, then took his hands off her shoulders, grabbed the bucket and resumed walking.

After a moment, he asked: “Where do you live, little girl?”

“In Montfermeil, if you know it.”

“Is that where we are going?”

“Yes, Monsieur.”

He paused again, then started off once more.

“So who is it who sent you off at this hour to get water in the woods?”

“It was Madame Thénardier.”

The man continued in a tone of voice he hoped sounded casual, but in which there was an odd tremor he could not hide: “What does she do, your Madame Thénardier?” “She’s my old lady,” said the child. “She keeps the inn.”

“The inn?” said the man. “Well then, that’s where I’m going to spend the night. Take me there.” “That’s where we’re going,” said the child.

The man was walking fairly quickly. Cosette kept up with him without any trouble. She no longer felt tired. Now and then she lifted her eyes up to the man with a sort of inexpressible tranquillity and abandon. No one had ever taught her to turn to Providence and to pray. Yet she felt something inside that resembled hope and joy and that wafted upward to the heavens.

Some minutes went by. The man went on: “Isn’t there some kind of servant at Madame Thénardier’s?” “No, Monsieur.”

“Are you on your own?”

“Yes, Monsieur.”

There was another silence. Cosette piped up: “That is, there are two little girls.”

“What little girls?”

“Popine and Zelma.”

That was how the child shortened the fabulously romantic names so dear to mother Thénardier.

“Who are Popine and Zelma?”

“They are Madame Thénardier’s young ladies. You could say, her daughters.”

“And what do they do, this pair?”

“Oh!” said the child. “They have beautiful dolls, things with gold in them, all sorts of stuff. They play, they have fun.” “All day long?”

“Yes, Monsieur.”

“What about you?”

“Me, I work.”

“All day long?”

The little girl raised her great big eyes where tears were forming invisibly in the night, and she replied softly: “Yes, Monsieur.” After an interval of silence, she went on: “Sometimes, when I’ve finished work and if they let me, I have fun, too.” “How do you have fun?”

“However I can. They leave me alone. But I don’t have many toys. Popine and Zelma don’t like me playing with their dolls. All I have is a little lead sword, no bigger than that.” The little girl held up her little finger.

“And it doesn’t cut?”

“Yes it does, Monsieur,” said the little girl. “It cuts lettuce and the heads off flies.” They were coming to the village. Cosette guided the stranger through the streets. They passed the baker’s, but Cosette forgot all about the bread she was supposed to bring back. The man had stopped asking her questions and now kept a mournful silence. When they had put the church behind them, the man, seeing all the shops out in the open under the stars, asked Cosette: “So the fair has come to town, has it?” “No, Monsieur, it’s Christmas.”

As they were getting near the inn, Cosette touched his arm, gingerly.

“Monsieur?”

“What, little one?”

“We are quite close to the house now.”

“Well, then?”

“Would you let me have the bucket again now?”

“Why?”

“Because, if Madame sees someone else carried it for me, she’ll belt me.”

The man gave her back the bucket. An instant later, they were at the door of the pothouse.

UNPLEASANTNESS OF PUTTING UP A PAUPER WHO MIGHT JUST BE RICH

COSETTE COULD NOT stop herself from shooting a look at the great doll that was still on show in the fancy goods shop; then she knocked on the door. The door opened. Mother Thénardier appeared, candle in hand.

“Ah, it’s you, you little twirp! Lord knows, you took your time! She’s been dawdling again having fun, the little hussy!” “Madame,” said Cosette, all trembling, “here is a monsieur who would like a room.”

Mother Thénardier swiftly replaced her scowl with an amiable grimace, a change of perspective peculiar to innkeepers, and avidly strained to get a look at the newcomer.

“You are the gentleman?” she asked.

“Yes, Madame,” replied the man, raising his hand to his hat.

Rich travellers are not so polite. The gesture plus inspection of the stranger’s getup and luggage, which mother Thénardier passed in review at a glance, wiped the amiable grimace off her face and caused the scowl to reappear. She resumed drily: “In you come, my good man.” The “good man” entered. Mother Thénardier threw him a second glance, examined in particular his redingote, which was absolutely worn out, and his hat, which was a bit knocked around, and consulted her husband, who was still drinking with the carters, with a nod and a wink and a shake of the head. The husband responded with that imperceptible wagging of the index finger that, backed by a pouting of the lips, signifies in such cases: broke. At that, mother Thénardier cried: “Ah, well! My dear man, I’m truly sorry, but I’m full up.” “You can put me wherever you like,” said the man. “In the attic, in the stables. I’ll pay the same price as a room.” “Forty sous.”

“Forty sous it is.”

“Marvellous.”

“Forty sous!” a carter whispered to mother Thénardier. “But it’s only twenty sous.”

“It’s forty sous for the likes of him,” replied mother Thénardier in the same tone. “I don’t put paupers up for any less.” “It’s true,” the husband added softly. “It lowers the tone of a place to have that lot hanging round.” But the man, after leaving his bundle and his stick on a seat, had sat down at a table, where Cosette rushed to put a bottle of wine and a glass. The peddler who had asked for the bucket of water had gone to take it to his horse himself. Cosette had resumed her place under the kitchen table and her knitting.

The man, who had hardly wet his lips with the wine he had poured himself, contemplated the little girl with a strange intensity.

Cosette was ugly. If she had been happy, she might have been pretty. We have already sketched that sad little figure. Cosette was thin and pale. She was nearly eight years old but you would have put her age at six. Her great big eyes, set deep in a sort of shadow, were almost lifeless because of all the crying they had done. The corners of her mouth had that curve of habitual anguish that you see in people on death row or in the terminally ill. Her hands were, as her mother had guessed, “covered in chilblains.” The firelight that shone on her at that moment made her bones more prominent and her thinness alarmingly visible. As she was always shivering, she had fallen into the habit of pressing her knees together. All she had for clothes was an old rag that would have been pitiful in summer but that was truly horrifying in winter. All she had on was a bit of cotton riddled with holes; not a scrap of wool. Here and there you could see her skin, and everywhere you could make out black-and-blue bruises showing where mother Thénardier had thumped her. Her bare legs were red and rough. The hollow at her collarbone would have made you weep. The little girl’s whole person, the way she moved, her demeanor, the sound of her voice, the gaps between one word and the next, her eyes, her silence, her slightest gesture, expressed and translated a single idea: fear.

Fear was written all over her; she was covered in it, so to speak; fear drew her elbows back against her sides, pulled her heels back under her skirts, made her take up the smallest possible space, only let her breathe as much as strictly necessary, and had become what we might call her body’s habit, without any possible variation, except to intensify. In the depths of her irises there was a point of amazement where terror lurked.

This fear was so strong that when she arrived, soaked to the bone as she was, Cosette had not dared to go and dry off by the fire and had silently resumed her work.

The expression in the eyes of this eight-year-old child was normally so forlorn and sometimes so tragic that it seemed, at certain moments, that she was in the process of turning into an idiot or a demon.

Never, as we said, had she known what it was to pray, never had she set foot inside a church. “You think I’ve got the time?” mother Thénardier would say.

The man in the yellow redingote did not take his eyes off Cosette.

“Ah, yes! Where’s the bread?”

Cosette, as was her custom every time mother Thénardier raised her voice, sprang out very fast from under the table.

She had completely forgotten about the bread. She resorted to the expedient of children who are always frightened; she lied.

“Madame, the baker was shut.”

“You should have knocked.”

“I did knock, Madame.”

“Well, then?”

“He didn’t open.”

“I’ll find out tomorrow if that’s true,” said mother Thénardier, “and if you’re lying, I’ll make you dance! Meanwhile, give me back the fifteen-sou piece.” Cosette plunged her hand into the pocket of her smock, and went green. The fifteen-sou coin was not there anymore.

“Come on!” said mother Thénardier. “Didn’t you hear me?”

Cosette turned her pocket inside out. There was nothing there. What could have happened to the money? The poor little girl could not get a word out. She was petrified.

“Did you lose it, the fifteen-sou coin?” growled mother Thénardier. “Or are you trying to steal it from me?” As she spoke she reached up to grab the strap hanging from the mantelpiece. This dreaded movement gave Cosette the strength to shout: “Have mercy, Madame! Madame, I won’t do it again!” Mother Thénardier took down the strap.

Meanwhile the man in the yellow redingote had been fumbling in the pocket of his waistcoat without anyone noticing. In any case, the other travellers were drinking or playing cards and paying no attention to anything else.

Cosette curled up into a ball of anguish in the corner of the fireplace, trying to gather up and conceal her poor half-naked limbs from view. Mother Thénardier raised her arm.

“Excuse me, Madame,” said the man, “but a little while ago I saw something fall out of the little girl’s pocket and roll away. It may be that.” As he spoke he bent down and appeared to be searching on the ground for a moment.

“I was right. Here it is,” he said, getting up.

And he handed a silver coin to mother Thénardier.

“Yes, that’s it,” she said.

That was not it, for it was a twenty-sou coin, but mother Thénardier had made a profit. She pocketed the coin and contented herself with throwing the child a ferocious look, saying: “Don’t let it happen again, ever!”

Cosette went back to what mother Thénardier called her “hole” and her great big eyes, fixed on the unknown traveller, began to take on an expression they had never had. It was still mainly naïve amazement but now tinged with a kind of stunned trust.

“While I think of it, do you want something to eat?” mother Thénardier asked the traveller.

He did not reply. He seemed to be deep in thought.

“What kind of man is this fellow?” mother Thénardier hissed. “Some frightful pauper. He doesn’t have enough cash to eat. Is he only going to pay me for his room? Luckily he didn’t get it into his head to pinch the money that was on the ground, but—” Meanwhile a door opened and in walked Éponine and Azelma.

They really were two pretty little girls, more bourgeois than peasants, incredibly charming, one with very shiny auburn plaits, the other with long black plaits that fell down her back, both so lively, clean, plump, fresh, and healthy that it was a pleasure to lay eyes on them. They were warmly bundled up, but with such maternal art that the layers of material did not detract in any way from the stylishness of the arrangement. Winter was catered for without erasing spring. The two little girls streamed light. What is more, they reigned supreme. In their outfits, in their gaiety, in the racket they made, there was supreme power. When they entered, mother Thénardier said to them in a scolding voice that was full of adoration: “Ah! So there you are, you two!” She pulled them up onto her knees, one after the other, smoothed their hair, retied their ribbons, and then releasing them again and with that gentle sort of shake peculiar to mothers, she cried: “Aren’t they a sight for sore eyes!” They went and sat by the fire. They had a doll they were turning over and back on their knees, chirping away happily. From time to time Cosette lifted her eyes from her knitting and sadly watched them playing.

Éponine and Azelma did not look at Cosette. For them she was like the dog. These three little girls could not chalk up twenty-four years between them and yet they already represented all of adult society; on the one side, envy, on the other, scorn.

The Thénardier sisters’ doll was very washed-out and very old and badly battered, but it did not look any less wonderful to Cosette, who had never had a doll in her life, “a real doll,” to use an expression any child will understand.

Suddenly mother Thénardier, who was constantly moving back and forth about the room, noticed that Cosette was distracted and that instead of working she was busy watching the little girls play.

“Aha! I’ve caught you!” she cried. “That’s your idea of work, is it! I’ll make you work with the strap.” The stranger, without getting up from his chair, turned toward mother Thénardier.

“Madame,” he said, smiling with an almost frightened look, “Bah! Let her play!”

On the part of any traveller who had eaten a slice of lamb and drunk two bottles of wine at supper and who did not look like “a frightful pauper,” such a wish would have been a command. But for a man with a hat like that to allow himself to have a desire and for a man with a redingote like that to allow himself to have a wish, that was something mother Thénardier did not feel she should put up with. She retorted sharply: “She has to work, since she eats. I don’t feed her for her to do nothing.” “So what is she making?” asked the stranger in that sweet voice that contrasted so strangely with his beggar’s clothes and his porter’s shoulders.

Mother Thénardier deigned to reply: “Stockings, if it’s all the same to you. Stockings for my little girls who don’t have any, none to speak of, and will soon be getting around barefoot.” The man looked at Cosette’s poor red feet and continued: “When will she be through with this pair of stockings?” “She’s got a good three or four full days ahead of her, the lazy thing.”

“And how much might this pair of stockings be worth, when they’re done?”

Mother Thénardier threw him a scornful look.

“At least thirty sous.”

“Would you take five francs for them?” the man went on.

“Christ!” guffawed a carter who was listening. “Five francs? You bet she’ll take ‘em! Five big ones!” Old man Thénardier decided it was time to take matters in hand.

“Yes, Monsieur, if they take your fancy, we could give you these stockings for five francs. We never refuse travellers anything.” “You’d have to pay right away,” said mother Thénardier in her usual short, peremptory manner.

“I will buy this pair of stockings,” replied the man, “and,” he added, taking a five-franc coin out of his pocket and laying it on the table, “I will pay for them.” Then he turned to Cosette.

“Now your work is mine. Go and play, my child.”

The carter was so moved by the five-franc coin that he left his glass where it was and came running over.

“Damn if it isn’t real!” he said, examining it. “A real rear wheel! Not a fake!”

Old man Thénardier went over and quietly slipped the coin in his waistcoat pocket.

Mother Thénardier had no comeback. She bit her lips and her face took on an expression of hate.

Yet Cosette was trembling. She took the risk of asking: “Madame, is it true? Can I go and play?” “Play!” said mother Thénardier in a terrible voice.

“Thank you, Madame,” said Cosette.

And while her mouth thanked mother Thénardier, her whole little heart thanked the traveller.

Old man Thénardier went back to his drinking. His wife said in his ear:

“What the hell can this yellow man be?”

“I have seen,” replied old man Thénardier, in a haughty tone, “millionaires getting around in redingotes like that.” Cosette had left her knitting but she had not left her place. Cosette always moved as little as possible. She had taken out of a box behind her a few old rags and her little lead sword.

Éponine and Azelma paid no attention whatsoever to what was happening. They had just performed a most important operation; they had grabbed hold of the cat. They had thrown the doll on the ground and Éponine, who was the elder, was wrapping the little cat up despite its meowings and contortions, in a whole pile of old red and blue rags. While she was performing this grave and difficult work, she said to her sister in that sweet and adorable language of children whose gracefulness, like the splendour of a butterfly’s wings, eludes us when we try to pin it down.

“See, sister, this doll is more fun than the other one. It moves, it cries, it’s nice and warm. See, sister, let’s play with it. It will be my little girl. I’ll be a lady. I’ll come to see you and you’ll look at it. Little by little you’ll see its whiskers and you’ll get a shock. And then you’ll see its ears and then you’ll see its tail and you’ll get a shock. And you’ll say to me: ‘Oh, my God!’ And I’ll say to you: ‘Yes, Madame, that’s my little girl and she’s like that. Little girls are like that these days.’” Azelma listened to Éponine in wonder.

Meanwhile the drinkers had started singing an obscene ditty and they were laughing so hard they shook the ceiling. Old man Thénardier egged them on and joined in.

Just as birds will make a nest out of anything, children can make a doll out of anything at all. While Éponine and Azelma were dressing up the cat, Cosette for her part had dressed up the sword. This done, she had laid it down in her arms and was softly singing to put it to sleep.

The doll is one of the most imperious needs and at the same time one of the most charming instincts little girls have. To look after, clothe, adorn, dress and undress, dress all over again, to teach, to scold a bit, to rock, cuddle, put to sleep, to imagine that some object is someone—this is the whole future of the woman in a nutshell. While dreaming and while chattering away, while putting together little trousseaux and little layettes, while sewing little frocks, little bodices, and little tops, the little girl becomes a young girl, the young girl becomes a big girl, the big girl becomes a woman. The first baby takes over from the last doll.

A little girl without a doll is more or less as miserable and just as impossible as a woman without a child.

So Cosette had made a doll of the sword.

Mother Thénardier, for her part, had gone over to the “yellow man.”

“My husband’s right,” she thought. “Maybe it’s Monsieur Laffitte1 in person. Some rich geezers are quite crazy!” She came and leaned on his table.

“Monsieur—” she said.

At the word monsieur, the man turned around. Mother Thénardier had only called him dear fellow or good man till that moment.

“You see, Monsieur,” she said, putting on her sweetest look, which was even more annoying to look at than her ferocious look, “I don’t mind the child playing, I’m not against it—but just this once, because you’re generous. You see, it comes from nothing. It has to work.” “The child is not yours, then?” asked the man.

“Good God, no, Monsieur! It’s a poor little thing that we took in just like that, out of charity. A kind of idiot child, a moron. She must have water on the brain. You see what a great big head she’s got. We do what we can for her—we’re not rich, after all. We’ve been writing to her people for nothing, it’s been six months since anyone’s answered. You’d have to think her mother’s dropped dead.” “Ah!” said the man, and he fell back into his reverie.

“The mother was no good,” added mother Thénardier. “She abandoned her kid.”

During this conversation, Cosette, as though some instinct alerted her that they were talking about her, had not taken her eyes off mother Thénardier. She was vaguely listening. She picked up a few words here and there.

Meanwhile the drinkers, all three-quarters sozzled, were singing their dirty song again, jollier than ever. It was an off-colour story in very bad taste in which the Holy Virgin and the Infant Jesus both featured. Mother Thénardier had wandered off to join in the outburts of hilarity. Cosette, under the table, was watching the fire, which was reflected in her staring eyes; she had again begun to rock the sort of swaddled doll she had made, and while she rocked it, she sang in a low voice: “My mother is dead! My mother is dead! My mother is dead!” At the renewed insistence of the hostess, the yellow man, “the millionaire,” finally consented to have supper.

“What would Monsieur like?”

“Bread and cheese,” said the man.

“No doubt about it, he’s a beggar,” thought mother Thénardier.

The drunks were still singing their song, and the child under the table also sang hers.

All of a sudden, Cosette broke off. She had just turned round and seen the little Thénardiers’ doll, which they had abandoned for the cat and left lying on the floor, a few feet from the kitchen table.

She dropped the swaddled sword, which only half satisfied her, and ran her eyes slowly around the room. Mother Thénardier was whispering to her husband and counting the money, Ponine and Zelma were playing with the cat, the travellers were eating or drinking or singing, no one was looking at her. She did not have a moment to lose. She crawled out from under the table on her hands and knees, made sure once more that no one was spying on her, then swiftly slid over to the doll and grabbed it. A second later she was back in her spot, sitting down, not moving, just turned in such a way as to cast a shadow over the doll, which she held in her arms. The happiness of playing with a doll was so rare for her that it had all the violence of rapture.

No one had seen her, except the traveller, who was slowly eating his meagre supper.

This joy lasted almost a quarter of an hour.

But no matter how careful she had been, Cosette did not realize that one of the doll’s feet was sticking out and that the fire in the grate was shining very brightly on it. This luminous pink foot emerging from the shadows suddenly struck Azelma, who said to Éponine: “Look, sister!” The two little girls stopped what they were doing, stunned. Cosette had dared take the doll! Éponine got up and, without letting go of the cat, went to her mother and began to tug at her skirt.

“Leave me alone!” said the mother. “What do you want?”

“Mother,” said the child. “Just look!”

And she pointed a finger at Cosette. Cosette, completely rapt in the ecstasy of possession, saw and heard nothing anymore.

Mother Thénardier’s face took on that special expression that is composed of the terrible and the trivial combined and that is why such women are called shrews. This time, wounded pride aggravated her anger even further. Cosette had crossed all the boundaries, Cosette had violated the doll of “the young ladies.” A czarina who had seen a moujik2 trying on her imperial son’s big blue sash would have exactly the same expression on her face.

She yelled in a voice made hoarse by outrage: “Cosette!”

Cosette jumped as though there had been an earthquake underneath her. She turned around.

“Cosette!” mother Thénardier yelled again.

Cosette took the doll and laid it gently on the ground in a sort of veneration mixed with despair. Then, without taking her eyes off it, she joined her hands together and—and it is frightening to say this of a child of her age—wrung them; then, something that none of the emotions of the day had forced from her, neither the expedition to the woods, nor the awful weight of the bucket of water, nor losing the money, nor the sight of the strap, nor even the dark words she had heard mother Thénardier mutter, she burst into tears. She sobbed.

Meanwhile, the traveller had got to his feet.

“What’s the matter?” he asked mother Thénardier.

“Can’t you see?” said mother Thénardier, pointing to the corpus delicti lying at Cosette’s feet.

“Well, what of it?” the man went on.

“That little bitch,” answered mother Thénardier, “has dared touch the girls’ doll!”

“All this carrying on for that!” said the man. “So what if she did play with the doll?” “She’s touched it with her filthy hands!” pursued mother Thénardier. “With her hideous hands!” At this point, Cosette sobbed even harder.

“Will you shut up!” screamed mother Thénardier.

The man went straight to the door to the street, opened it, and went out.

The moment he had gone, mother Thénardier took advantage of his absence to swiftly give Cosette a nasty kick under the table, which caused the little girl to howl.

The door opened again, the man reappeared; he was carrying in both hands the fabulous doll we mentioned and that the village kids had been ogling since morning, and he stood it before Cosette, saying: “Here, this is for you.” It seems that all the time he had been there—over an hour—lost in his thoughts, he had vaguely been aware of the fancy goods shop lit up with little lanterns and candles so splendidly that you could see it through the tavern window like an illumination.

Cosette looked up. She watched the man coming toward her with the doll the same way she’d have watched the sun approaching, she heard those unheard-of words: “This is for you”—she looked at him, she looked at the doll, then she slowly backed away and went and hid right at the back of the table next to the wall.

She no longer cried, she no longer howled, she looked like she no longer dared breathe.

Mother Thénardier, Éponine, Azelma were all so many statues. Even the drinkers stopped drinking. A solemn silence had fallen over the entire tavern. Mother Thénardier, petrified and dumb, started in on her conjectures again: “What the hell is this old codger? Is he a pauper? Is he a millionaire? Maybe he’s both—meaning, a thief.” The face of Thénardier the husband offered that expressive line that accentuates the humanness of the human face every time the dominant instinct shows up in it in all its bestial power. The man who ran that sleazy dive studied the doll and the traveller in turn; he seemed to smell the man as he would smell a sack of money. It was all over in a flash. He went over to his wife and whispered to her: “That thing costs at least thirty francs. Don’t do anything stupid. Start grovelling.” Vulgar natures have one thing in common with guileless natures and that is that there is never any transition.

“Well, Cosette,” mother Thénardier crooned in a voice that was dripping with the bitter honey of the spiteful woman, “aren’t you going to take your doll?” Cosette took the risk of coming out of her hole.

“My little Cosette,” mother Thénardier went on in syrupy tones, “Monsieur is giving you a doll. Take it. It’s yours.” Cosette stared at the wonderful doll in a sort of terror. Her face was still flooded with tears but her eyes began to fill up, like the sky at the break of day, with strange rays of joy. What she felt at that moment was something like what she would have felt if someone had suddenly said to her: Little girl, you are the queen of France.

It seemed to her that if she touched the doll, thunder would roll out of it. Which was true to some extent, for she told herself that mother Thénardier would roar at her—and belt her. Yet the attraction won out. She ended up coming closer and timidly murmured as she turned toward mother Thénardier: “Can I, Madame?” No words could describe the look on her face, which was at once desperate, horror-stricken, and thrilled.

“For God’s sake!” said mother Thénardier. “It’s yours. Since Monsieur is giving it to you.” “True, Monsieur?” Cosette went on. “Is it true? It’s mine, the lady?”

The stranger looked as though his eyes were full of tears. He seemed to have reached that emotional state where you can’t speak for fear of breaking down. He nodded to Cosette and placed the hand of “the lady” in her little hand.

Cosette pulled her hand back as though the hand of “the lady” had burned it and began to study the floor. We are compelled to add that at that moment, she stuck her tongue out in a fairly extravagant manner. All of a sudden she wheeled round and furiously grabbed the doll.

“I’ll call her Catherine,” she said.

It was a truly bizarre moment, the moment Cosette’s rags pressed against and embraced the ribbons and fresh pink muslins of the doll.

“Madame,” she went on, “can I put her on a chair?”

“Yes, my child,” said mother Thenardier.

Now it was Éponine and Azelma who watched Cosette with envy. Cosette put Catherine on a chair, then sat on the floor in front of her and stayed there without moving, without saying a word, in an attitude of contemplation.

“Go ahead and play, then, Cosette,” said the stranger.

“Oh, I am playing,” replied the little girl.

This stranger, this unknown quantity who seemed like a visitation from Providence to Cosette, was at that moment what mother Thénardier hated most in the world. But she had to restrain herself. It was more emotion than she could bear, even accustomed as she was to dissimulation in her effort to copy her husband in all things. She rushed to send her daughters to bed, then asked the yellow man for his “permission” to send Cosette to bed, too—“she’s had such a big day today,” she added, on a maternal note. Cosette went off to bed carrying Catherine in her arms.

Mother Thénardier went every so often to the other end of the room, where her man was, “to soothe her soul,” as she put it. She exchanged with her husband a few words all the more furious for her not daring to utter them out loud: “Stupid old goat! What’s got into him? Turning up here and upsetting us like this! Wanting that little monster to play! Giving her dolls! Giving dolls worth forty francs to that little mongrel that I’d give away for forty sous, myself! Any more of that and he’ll be calling her Your Majesty like she was the duchesse de Berry!3 He must be off his rocker! You reckon he’s got rabies, our old mystery man?” “Why? It’s pretty straightforward,” old man Thénardier shot back. “If it makes him happy! You, you’re happy if the little one’s working, him, he’s happy if she’s playing. He’s within his rights. A traveller can do what he likes if he’s paying. If the old boy’s a philanthropist, what’s it to you? If he’s a half-wit, it’s none of your business. What are you interfering for, as long as he’s got the money?” Spoken like the king of the castle and reasoned like an innkeeper. In neither case was there any right of reply.

The man was leaning on the table and had resumed his dreamy attitude. All the other travellers, peddlers, and carters had moved off a bit and stopped singing. They observed him at a distance with a sort of respectful fear. This ordinary character so poorly dressed, who pulled five-franc pieces, “rear wheels,” out of his pocket with such ease and who lavished gigantic dolls on little trollops in wooden clogs was certainly a magnificent and awesome fellow.

Several hours passed. Midnight mass had been said, Christmas Eve was over, the drinkers had gone, the bar had closed, the low room was deserted, the fire had gone out, the stranger was still in the same place and in the same position. From time to time, he shifted his weight from one elbow to the other. That was all. But he had not said a word since Cosette had left.

Only the Thénardiers, out of propriety and curiosity, remained in the room.

“Is he going to spend the night like that?” grumbled mother Thénardier.

When the clock struck two in the morning, she declared herself defeated and said to her husband: “I’m going to bed. You do what you like.” The husband sat down at a table in a corner, lit a candle, and began to read the Courrier français.4 A good hour passed in this way. The worthy innkeeper had read the Courrier français at least three times, from the date of the edition to the name of the printer. The stranger did not budge.

Thénardier shifted in his seat, coughed, spat, blew his nose, made his chair creak. The man didn’t move a muscle. “Is he asleep?” Thénardier wondered. The man was not asleep, but nothing could rouse him. Finally Thénardier took off his cap, quietly went over, and ventured to say: “Won’t Monsieur get some rest?” Bed down would have seemed excessive and too familiar to him. Get some rest smacked of luxury and was nice and respectful. Words like those have the mysterious and marvellous property of inflating the sum on the bill to be paid the following morning. A room where you bed down costs twenty sous; a room where you get some rest costs twenty francs.

“Oh, yes!” said the stranger. “You’re right. Where is your stable?”

“Monsieur,” said Thénardier with a smile, “I will take Monsieur there.”

He took the candle, the man took his bundle and his stick, and Thénardier led him to a room on the first floor, which was of a rare splendour, all furnished in mahogany, with a sleigh bed and curtains of red calico.

“What is this?” said the traveller.

“It’s our own bridal chamber,” said the innkeeper. “We live in another room, the wife and I. We only come in here three or four times a year.” “I’d have been just as happy with the stable,” said the man bluntly.

Thénardier acted as though he had not heard this rather unkind remark.

He lit two brand-new beeswax candles that were on display on the mantelpiece. A reasonable fire was blazing away in the hearth. On the mantelpeice, under a glass jar, sat a woman’s headdress worked with silver thread and orange blossom.5 “And this, what is this?” the stranger continued.

“Monsieur,” said Thénardier, “that’s my wife’s bridal hat.”

The traveller gave the object a look that seemed to say: So there was once a time when that monster was a virgin!

As it happened, Thénardier was lying. When he took on the lease of this shack to turn it into a pothouse, he had found the room done out like this and had bought the furniture and picked the orange blossom up at the junk dealer’s, judging that it would put “the wife” in a gracious light and that the result for his house would be what the English call respectability.

When the traveller turned round, the host had vanished. Thénardier had discreetly snuck off, without daring to say good night, not wanting to show excessive cordiality to a man he was planning to fleece royally the following morning.

The innkeeper 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: “You know I’m kicking Cosette out the door tomorrow.” Thénardier replied coldly: “That’s what you think!”

They did not exchange another word and some minutes later their candle went out.

For his part, the traveller had put his bundle and stick in a corner. With the host gone, he sat in an armchair and stayed there thinking for a while. Then he took his shoes off, took one of the two candles, blew out the other one, pushed the door open and left the room, looking all around him as though he were searching for something. He went down a hallway and reached the stairs. There, he heard a very faint little sound that was like a child breathing. He followed the sound and came to a sort of triangular nook built under the staircase or, rather, formed by the staircase itself. The nook was quite simply the space beneath the stairs. Here, among all kinds of old baskets and old bits of broken glass and crockery, in the dust and the cobwebs, there was a bed—if you can call a bed a straw mattress so riddled with holes you can see the straw beneath and a blanket so riddled with holes you can see the straw mattress beneath. No sheets. The mattress was lying right on the tiles on the floor. In this bed Cosette slept.

The man went up to her and looked at her. Cosette was sleeping soundly. She was fully clothed. In winter she did not take her clothes off at all because of the cold.

She held the doll tightly to her; its big open eyes shone in the dark. From time to time, she let out a huge sigh as if she were about to wake up, and she squeezed the doll in her arms almost convulsively. Only one of her wooden clogs was lying next to the bed.

An open door near Cosette’s cubbyhole allowed a glimpse of a fairly big dark room. The stranger went in. At the back, through a glass door, you could see two tiny, very white twin beds. These were the beds of Azelma and Éponine. Behind the beds a curtainless wicker cradle was half-hidden, where the little boy who had screamed all night was sleeping.

The stranger surmised that this room communicated with that of the Thénardier couple. He was about to withdraw when his gaze fell on the fireplace—one of those vast tavern fireplaces that always have such a minuscule fire, when there is a fire, and that are so chilling to see. In this one, there was no fire, there were no ashes, even; but what there was attracted the traveller’s attention. There were two little child’s shoes in stylish shapes and different sizes; the traveller remembered the sweet and immemorial custom of children putting their shoes in the fireplace on Christmas Eve to wait there in the dark in the hopes that some sparkling present would be put in them by their good fairy. Éponine and Azelma had made sure they did not forget to do so and had each put one of their shoes in the fireplace.

The traveller crouched down.

The fairy, that is, the mother, had already paid her visit, and gleaming in each shoe was a beautiful brand new ten-sou piece.

The man stood up and was about to walk away when he spotted another object, at the back to one side, in the darkest corner of the hearth. He peered and recognized a clog, a hideous clog made out of the roughest wood, half-broken and all covered in ash and caked-on mud. It was Cosette’s clog. Cosette, with that touching childish trust that can be endlessly betrayed without ever being discouraged, had also placed her clog in the fireplace.

Hope in a child who has never known anything but despair is a sweet and sublime thing.

There was nothing in this wooden shoe. The stranger felt in his waistcoat, bent down, and placed a gold louis in Cosette’s clog.

Then he padded back to his room as silently as a wolf.

THÉNARDIER IN OPERATION

NEXT MORNING, TWO hours at least before daybreak, Thénardier, the husband, was sitting by a candle at a table in the low room of the tavern, pen in hand, composing the bill for the traveller in the yellow redingote.

The wife was on her feet, half-bent over him, following him with her eyes. They did not exchange a word. On one side, it was all profound meditation, on the other, that religious admiration with which you watch some wonder of the human mind spring forth and blossom. A noise could be heard in the house; it was the Lark sweeping the stairs.

After a good quarter of an hour and a few mistakes scratched out, Thénardier produced this chef d’oeuvre: BILL OF THE MONSIEUR IN NO. 1

Service was written servisse.

“Twenty-three francs!” cried mother Thénardier with enthusiasm marred by some hesitation.

Like all great artists, Thénardier was not satisfied.

“Pah!” he said.

It was the tone of Castlereagh, at the Congress of Vienna, drawing up the bill France would have to pay.

“Monsieur Thénardier, you are right, he definitely owes that,” mumured the wife, who was thinking of the doll given to Cosette in front of her girls. “It’s only right, but it’s too much. He won’t pay.” Old man Thénardier gave out his chilling laugh and said: “He’ll pay.”

This laugh was the ultimate expression of certainty and authority. What was said thus had to be. The wife did not try to press the subject. She started to tidy the tables; the husband paced up and down the room. A moment later he added: “I owe at least fifteen hundred francs, myself!” He went and sat in the corner of the fireplace meditating, his feet on the hot ashes.

“As for that!” the wife went on. “Aren’t you forgetting I’m chucking Cosette out today? That monster! It tears my heart out to see her with that doll! I’d rather marry Louis XVIII than keep her in the house another day!” Old man Thénardier lit his pipe and answered between two puffs: “You’ll give the man the bill.” Then he went out. Scarcely had he quit the room than the traveller came in.

Thénardier spun round at once and stayed motionless at the half-open door, visible only to his wife.

The yellow man was carrying his bundle and his stick in his hand.

“Up so early!” said mother Thénardier. “Is Monsieur leaving us so soon?”

As she spoke, she turned the bill round in her hands with an embarrassed look and folded it over, creasing it with her nails. Her hard face had shifted subtly to an expression of timidity and punctiliousness that was not normal for her.

To present such a bill to a man who looked every inch “the bum” did not come easy to her.

The traveller seemed worried and distracted. He answered: “Yes, Madame. I’m off.”

“Monsieur,” she went on, “did not have business in Montfermeil, then?”

“No. I’m just passing through. That’s all … So, Madame,” he added, “what do I owe?”

Mother Thénardier handed him the folded bill without answering.

The man unfolded the piece of paper, looked at it, but his mind was clearly elsewhere.

“Madame,” he said, “do you do a brisk trade in this Montfermeil?”

“So-so, Monsieur,” replied mother Thénardier, stunned at not seeing any explosion.

She followed this up in an elegiac and lamenting tone: “Oh, Monsieur! Times are certainly hard! And then, we don’t get many well-heeled types out here! It’s all small fry, no-hopers, if you know what I mean. If only we got travellers as rich and generous as Monsieur now and then! We’ve got so many outlays. Listen, that little thing eats us out of house and home.” “What little thing?”

“The little girl, of course—you know! Cosette! The Lark, as we say around here!”

“Ah!” said the man.

She continued: “They’re a silly lot, they are, these peasants, with their nicknames! She looks more like a bat than a lark. You see, Monsieur, we don’t ask for charity, but we can’t give it, either. We earn nothing, and we have to fork out a fortune. There’s the license, the taxes, doors and windows,1 duties! As Monsieur knows, the government demands an awful lot of money. And then I’ve got my own girls, haven’t I? I don’t need to feed someone else’s brat.” The man replied in a voice he was forcing himself to make indifferent but in which there was a quiver: “What if she was taken off your hands?” “Who? Cosette?”

“Yes.”

The woman’s violent red face lit up with a hideous flush.

“Ah, Monsieur! My good Monsieur! Take her, keep her, take her away, cart her off, sprinkle her with sugar, stuff her with truffles, drink her, eat her, and may the Holy Blessed Virgin and all the saints in heaven bless you!” “Agreed.”

“True? You’ll take her away?”

“I’ll take her away.”

“Right now?”

“Right now. Call the child.”

“Cosette!” yelled mother Thénardier.

“Meanwhile,” the man went on, “I still haven’t paid what I owe. How much is it?”

He cast a glance at the bill and could not repress a start of surprise.

“Twenty-three francs!”

He looked at the innkeeper’s wife and repeated: “Twenty-three francs?”

There had been in the utterance of that repeated sentence the tone that distinguishes the question mark from the exclamation mark. Mother Thénardier had time to prepare herself for the shock. She answered with assurance: “Heavens, yes, Monsieur! It’s twenty-three francs.” The stranger placed five five-franc coins on the table.

“Go and get the little girl,” he said.

At that moment, old man Thénardier strode into the middle of the room and said: “Monsieur owes twenty-six sous.” “Twenty-six sous!” cried the wife.

“Twenty sous for the room,” resumed Thénardier coldly, “and six sous for supper. As for the little girl, I need to talk that over a bit with Monsieur. Leave us, missus.” Mother Thénardier had one of those radiant flushes that unexpected flashes of talent will spur in a person. She felt that the great actor was entering the stage, and wordlessly made herself scarce.

As soon as they were alone, old man Thénardier offered the traveller a chair. The traveller sat down; Thénardier remained standing and his face took on a peculiar expression of bonhomie and simplicity.

“Monsieur,” he said, “listen, I’ll tell you something. And that something is that I adore her myself, that child.” The stranger stared at him.

“What child?”

Thénardier continued: “It’s funny! You get so attached. What’s all that money for? Take your hundred-sou coins back. I adore that child.” “Which one?” the stranger demanded.

“Our little Cosette, of course! Aren’t you wanting to take her from us? Well, then, I’m telling you frankly, true as it is that you’re an honest man, I can’t allow it. She’d be breaking her promise to me, that little girl would. I first set eyes on it when it was just a tiny mite. It’s true that she costs us money, it’s true that she has her faults, it’s true that we aren’t rich, it’s true that I forked out over four hundred francs in medicine in one go once when she was sick! But a person’s got to do something for the good Lord. It doesn’t have a mother or a father, I brought her up. My bread is her bread. In fact, I’m truly attached to her, that child. You understand, you get to feel real affection. I’m a bit of a sucker, myself, I don’t think about it, I love the little girl; my wife’s sharp but she loves her, too. You see, she’s like our child. I need to have it jabbering away about the place.” The stranger went on staring at him. He continued.

“Pardon, sorry, Monsieur, but you don’t give your child to some passerby just like that. Eh? I’m not wrong, am I? Although, I can’t say you’re rich, you seem like a good sort of fellow, what if it would make her happy? But we’d have to be sure about that. You get me? Suppose I do let her go and sacrifice myself, I’d like to know where she’s going, I wouldn’t want to lose sight of her, I’d want to know who she’s living with, so I could go and see her now and then, and for her to know that her good old foster father is there, that he’s watching over her. In the end, some things just can’t be done. I don’t even know your name. If you took her off, I’d be saying: ‘Well, then, what about the Lark? Where can she be?’ I’d have to see some miserable scrap of paper at least, a tiny speck of a passport, something!” The stranger, without ceasing to look at him with that look that goes straight to the bottom of the conscience, so to speak, answered him in a grave and firm tone: “Monsieur Thénardier, you don’t need a passport to go five leagues from Paris. If I take Cosette, I will take her, and that’s that. You will not know my name, you will not know where I live, you will not know where she is, and my intention is that she never sees you again in her life. I break the rope she has tied around her foot, and she flies away, free. Does that suit you? Yes or no.” Just as demons and spirits recognize by certain signs the presence of a superior god, Thénardier understood that he was dealing with someone very strong. It was like an intuition; he understood this with his clear and sagacious swiftness. The night before, while drinking with the carters and smoking and singing dirty ditties, he had spent the evening observing the stranger, watching him like a cat, studying him like a mathematician. He had at once both spied on him on his own account, for pleasure and out of instinct, and spied on him as though he were being paid to do so. Not a gesture, not a move that the man with the yellow coat made had escaped him. Even before the stranger had so obviously shown interest in Cosette, Thénardier had seen it coming. He had intercepted the old man’s searching glances, which constantly returned to the child. Why the interest? What kind of man was he? Why, with so much money in his purse, the miserable getup? Questions that he asked himself without being able to resolve them and that annoyed him. He had dwelt on them all night. The man couldn’t be Cosette’s father. Was he a grandfather? Then why not make himself known right away? When you’re within your rights, you show your hand. This man obviously had no rights over Cosette. So what was he? Old man Thénardier was lost in suppositions. He glimpsed everything and saw nothing. Whatever was going on, when he began this conversation with the man, sure that there was some secret at the bottom of it all, sure that the man was keen to stay in the shadows, he felt himself to be in a strong position; at the stranger’s clear and firm response, when he saw that this mysterious personage was so simply mysterious, he felt weak. He had not expected anything of the kind. All his conjectures were put to rout. He rallied his ideas. He weighed the whole thing up in a second. Old man Thénardier was one of those men who judge a situation at a glance. He gauged that this was the moment to get straight to the point. He behaved like the great captains at the decisive moment that they alone know how to recognize. He promptly unmasked his guns.

“Monsieur,” he said, “I must have fifteen hundred francs.”

The stranger took an old black leather wallet out of a side pocket, opened it, and took out three banknotes, which he placed on the table. Then he pressed his huge thumb down on the notes and said to the owner of the flophouse: “Get Cosette.” While this was happening, what was Cosette doing?

As soon as she had woken up, Cosette had run to her wooden clog. She found the gold coin there. It was not a napoléon, it was one of those spanking new twenty-franc pieces from the Restoration, on the face of which the little Prussian pigtail had replaced the crown of laurel.2 Cosette was dazed. Her fate was beginning to intoxicate her. She did not know what a gold coin was, she had never seen one, she wasted no time in hiding it in her pocket as though she had stolen it. Yet she felt that it really was hers, she guessed where the gift had come from, but the joy she felt was mixed with fear. She was happy, but more than anything else, she was stupefied. These things, so magnificent and so lovely, did not seem real to her. The doll frightened her, the gold coin frightened her. She vaguely shook before such splendours. Only the stranger did not frighten her. On the contrary, he reassured her. Since the night before, in her amazement, in her sleep, she had thought in her little child’s head about this man who looked old and poor and so sad, and who was so rich and so good. Ever since she had met the man in the woods, everything seemed to have changed for her. Less happy than the merest swallow in the sky, Cosette had never known what it was to take refuge in her mother’s shadow, under her mother’s wing. For five years, that is, for as long as she could remember, the poor child had been shivering and freezing. She had always been completely naked beneath the bitter kiss of misfortune, now it seemed to her that she was fully clothed. Before, her soul had been cold, now it was warm. She no longer felt so terrified of mother Thénardier. She was no longer alone; someone was there.

She had very quickly got down to her usual morning job. The louis, which she had on her in the same apron pocket the fifteen-sou coin had fallen out of the night before, kept distracting her. She did not dare touch it, but she spent five minutes at a time contemplating it, with her tongue hanging out, we must confess. As she swept the stairs, she stopped dead, forgetting her broom and the entire universe as she looked at this star shining at the bottom of her pocket.

It was in one of these dreamy moments of contemplation that mother Thénardier caught up with her.

On her husband’s orders, she had gone in search of her. It was unheard-of, but for once she did not give her a slap or let fly some insult.

“Cosette,” she said almost sweetly, “come quick.”

An instant later, Cosette stepped into the low room.

The stranger took the bundle he had brought and untied it. This bundle contained a little woolen dress, a smock, a fustian vest, a petticoat, a fichu, woolen stockings, and proper shoes—a complete outfit for an eight-year-old girl. All of it was black.

“My child,” said the man, “take this and go and get dressed quickly.”

Day was dawning when those inhabitants of Montfermeil who were starting to open their doors saw walking by on the road to Paris a shabbily dressed man hand in hand with a little girl all in mourning and carrying a big pink doll in her arms. They were heading for Livry. It was our man and Cosette.

No one knew who the man was, and as Cosette was no longer in rags, many did not recognize her either.

Cosette was going away. Who with? She had no idea. Where? She did not know. All she understood was that she was leaving the Thénardier flophouse behind. No one had thought to say goodbye to her, nor had she thought to say goodbye to anyone. She was getting away from this hated and hateful house.

Poor sweet little creature whose heart had till that moment only ever been crushed!

Cosette walked gravely, opening wide her huge eyes and studying the sky. She had put her louis in the pocket of her new smock. From time to time she bent over and took a peek at it, then she looked at the man. She felt a bit like she was walking along next to God.

WHO LOOKS FOR THE BEST MAY FIND THE WORST

MOTHER THÉNARDIER, AS was her wont, had left her husband to it. She was expecting big things. When the man and Cosette had gone, old man Thénardier let a good quarter of an hour pass, and then he took her aside and showed her the fifteen hundred francs.

“Is that all?” she said.

It was the first time since they were married that she had dared criticize an act of the master. He reeled from the blow.

“Actually, you’re right,” he said, “I’m an idiot. Give me my hat.”

He folded the three banknotes, shoved them in his pocket, and went out as fast as he could go, but he went the wrong way at first, off to the right. Some neighbours he questioned soon set him straight. The Lark and the man had been seen heading in the direction of Livry. He followed the sign, taking great strides and muttering to himself.

“That man’s obviously a millionaire dressed up in yellow and I’m a damned idiot. First he hands over twenty sous, then five francs, then fifty francs, then fifteen hundred francs—just as easily every time. He’d have handed over fifteen thousand francs. But I’ll catch up with him.” Then there was the bundle of clothes already put together in advance for the little girl, that was very strange—there had to be any amount of mystery behind that. You don’t let go of a mystery once you’ve got hold of one. The secrets of the rich are sponges full of gold; you have to know how to squeeze them. All these thoughts swirled around in his brain. “I’m a damned idiot,” he said.

When you leave Montfermeil and reach the bend in the road to Livry, you can see the road lying ahead of you along the plateau for a very long way. Having reached that point, he reckoned he should be able to spot the man and the little girl. He looked ahead as far as the eye could see and saw nothing. He made further inquiries. But he was losing time. Passersby told him the man and the child he was looking for were heading off toward the woods near Gagny. He sped off in that direction.

They had the jump on him, but a child can only go slowly and he was going fast. And then again, he knew the countryside backward.

All of a sudden, he stopped and smacked his forehead the way a man will when he has forgotten something fundamental and is ready to retrace his steps.

“I should have brought my gun,” he said to himself.

Thénardier was one of those split personalities who sometimes pass among us without our knowledge and who disappear without our knowing them because fate has shown us only one side of them. The fate of many a man is to live half submerged in this way. In a quiet, humdrum situation, Thénardier had all it takes to play—we do not say to be—what passes for an honest tradesman, a decent burgher. At the same time, given certain circumstances, given the occurrence of certain jolts stirring up the underside of his nature, he had all it takes to be a real bastard. He was a shopkeeper with a monster inside him. Satan must at times have crouched in some corner of that hole in which Thénardier lived and marvelled at his hideous masterpiece.

After a moment’s hesitation: “Bah!” he thought. “They’ve got time to get away!”

But he continued on his way, hurtling ahead, almost as though he knew exactly where he was going, with the cunning of a fox scenting a flock of partridges.

Indeed, when he had passed the ponds and cut diagonally across the big clearing that lies to the right of the avenue de Belleville, just as he reached the grassy path that practically circles the hill and covers the arch of the old aqueduct of the abbey of Chelles, he spotted above a bush a hat on which he had already built so many conjectures. It was the man’s hat. The bush was low. Thénardier could make out the man and Cosette, just sitting there. You couldn’t see the child because she was so small but you could see the doll’s head.

Old man Thénardier was not mistaken. The man had sat down there to let Cosette have a little rest. The innkeeper rounded the scrub and appeared to pop up out of nowhere in the eyes of the people he was looking for.

“Pardon me, sorry, Monsieur,” he said, completely winded, “but here’s your fifteen hundred francs back.” As he spoke those words, he held out the three banknotes to the stranger. The man raised his eyes.

“What does this mean?”

Old man Thénardier answered respectfully: “Monsieur, it means that I’m taking Cosette back.” Cosette shuddered and snuggled closer to the nice man.

He answered looking Thénardier straight in the eye and enunciating each syllable distinctly: “You are taking Cosette back?” “Yes, Monsieur, I’m taking her back. I’ll tell you something. I’ve thought about it. Actually, I don’t have the right to give her to you. I’m an honest man, you see. This little girl doesn’t belong to me, she belongs to her mother. It’s her mother that entrusted her to me, I can only hand her over to her mother. You’ll say to me: Her mother is dead. Fine. In that case, I can only hand the child over to a person who can bring me a written order signed by the mother to the effect that I should hand the child to that particular party. That much is clear.” Without replying, the man fumbled in his pocket and Thénardier watched as the wallet with the banknotes reappeared. The innkeeper felt a shiver of joy.

“Good!” he thought. “Stay with it. He’s about to corrupt me!”

Before he opened the wallet, the traveller quickly looked around him. The place was absolutely deserted. There was not a soul in the woods or in the valley. The man opened the wallet and pulled out, not a fistful of banknotes as Thénardier had hoped, but a simple bit of paper, which he unfolded and presented, open, to the innkeeper, saying: “You’re right. Read.” Thénardier took the piece of paper and read:

Montreuil-sur-mer, March 25, 1823

Monsieur Thénardier,

You will hand Cosette over to the bearer. He will settle all small debts.

Yours most faithfully,

FANTINE

“You know this signature?” the man went on.

It was Fantine’s signature. Old man Thénardier recognized it.

There was nothing to say. He felt doubly furious, furious at being forced to do without the bribe he was hoping for and furious at being beaten. The man added: “You can keep this note as your receipt.” Old man Thénardier retreated in good order.

“This signature has been forged quite well,” he grumbled through his teeth. “Well, so be it!” Then he made one last deperate bid.

“Monsieur,” he said, “it’s all right, since you are the bearer. But you have to pay me ‘all small debts.’ I’m owed quite a lot.” The man rose to his feet and, flicking off the dust from his threadbare sleeve, he said: “Monsieur Thénardier, in January the mother reckoned that she owed you a hundred and twenty francs; in February you sent her a bill for five hundred francs; you received three hundred francs in February and three hundred francs at the beginning of March. Since then, nine months have gone by, at fifteen francs a month, the agreed fee, that comes to a hundred and thirty-five francs. You have received a hundred francs too much. There remains thirty-five francs owing to you; I just gave you fifteen hundred francs.” Old man Thénardier felt what a wolf feels when he has been bitten and held by the steel jaws of a trap.

“Who the hell is this man?” he wondered.

He did what the wolf does. He gave a jerk. Audacity had already paid off for him once.

“Monsieur Whose-name-I-don’t-know,” he said resolutely, this time putting aside all marks of respect. “You’ll give me a thousand écus or I’ll take Cosette back.” The stranger said calmly: “Come, Cosette.”

He took Cosette with his left hand and with the right picked up his stick from the ground. Old man Thénardier noted how enormous the cudgel was and how isolated the place.

The man plunged into the woods with the child, leaving the innkeeper motionless and speechless. As they walked off, old man Thénardier observed the man’s broad shoulders, a little slumped, and his huge fists. Then his eyes returned to himself, falling on his puny arms and his bony hands.

“I really must be an idiot,” he mused, “not to have brought my gun—since I was going hunting!” Even so, the innkeeper would not let go.

“I wouldn’t mind knowing where he’s going, but,” he said.

And he began to follow them at a distance. Two things remained in his hands, one, ironically enough, the note signed Fantine, and the other, some consolation, the fifteen hundred francs.

The man led Cosette in the direction of Livry and Bondy. He walked slowly, with his head down, in an attitude of reflection and sadness. Winter had stripped the leaves off the trees and turned the woods to a lattice of bare branches, so much so that Thénardier did not lose sight of them, though he kept his distance. From time to time, the man turned and checked whether he was being followed. Suddenly he spotted Thénardier. He swiftly darted into a thicket with Cosette and they both disappeared from view.

“Hell’s bells!” said Thénardier. And he stepped up the pace.

The density of the undergrowth forced him to stick close to them. When the man was in the most overgrown spot, he turned round. Thénardier tried in vain to hide among the branches, but there was nothing he could do to stop the man from seeing him. The man threw him an uneasy glance, then shook his head and continued on his way. The innkeeper started following him again. This time the man gave him such a dark look that old man Thénardier decided it was pointless going any farther. Thénardier turned back.

THE NUMBER 9430 COMES UP AGAIN AND WINS COSETTE THE LOTTERY

JEAN VALJEAN WAS NOT dead.

When he fell into the sea or, rather, when he threw himself in, he was, as we have seen, without leg irons. He swam underwater between two wakes out as far as a ship at anchor that had a boat tied fast to it. He found a way to hide in this boat till nightfall. When night came on he dived into the water again and swam away, reaching the coast a short distance from Cap Brun. There, as he wasn’t short of money, he was able to buy himself some clothes. An open-air dive with a dance floor on the outskirts of Balaguier doubled at the time as a changing room for escaped convicts, a lucrative speciality. Then, like all those sad fugitives trying to throw the eyes of the law off the track and elude social doom, Jean Valjean followed an obscure and meandering itinerary. He first found asylum in the Pradeaux, near Beausset. Then he headed toward the Grand-Villard near Briançon in the Upper Alps. A groping and fretful flight, a mole’s maze, where the twists and turns were completely unfamiliar. Later, they were able to find traces of his having been in the Ain in the area around Civrieux, in the Pyrenees, at Accons at the spot known as the Grande-de-Doumecq, close to the hamlet of Chavailles, and in the environs of Périgueux, at Brunies, a canton of the Chapelle-Gonaguet. He made it to Paris. We have just seen him in Montfermeil.

His first concern when he arrived in Paris was to buy mourning gear for a little girl of seven or eight, then to find a place to stay. That done, he got himself to Montfermeil.

You will remember that the last time he escaped, he had already been on a mysterious trip there or in the general environs, which the law got wind of. Otherwise he was thought to be dead and this further clouded the obscurity that enveloped him. In Paris, a newspaper recording this fact had fallen into his hands. He felt reassured and almost at peace, as though he really were dead.

On the night of the very same day that Jean Valjean had wrenched Cosette out of the Thénardiers’ clutches, he was back in Paris. He walked back in at nightfall, with the child, via the barrière de Monceaux. There he hopped into a cabriolet that drove him to the esplanade de l’Observatoire. He got down, paid the driver, took Cosette by the hand, and together, in the black of night, through the deserted streets that border on L’Ourcine and La Glacière, they headed toward the boulevard de l’Hôpital.

The day had been strange and full of emotion for Cosette; they had sat behind hedges and eaten bread and cheese bought at remote inns, they had changed carriages often, they had travelled short distances on foot; she did not complain, but she was tired, and Jean Valjean realized this from the way she pulled more heavily on his hand as they walked along. He lifted her up on his back; Cosette, without letting go of Catherine, laid her head on Jean Valjean’s shoulder and fell asleep.