Les Misérables
The drunken men were still singing their song, and the child under the
table was singing hers.
All at once, Cosette paused; she had just turned round and caught sight
of the little Thénardiers’ doll, which they had abandoned for the cat
and had left on the floor a few paces from the kitchen table.
Then she dropped the swaddled sword, which only half met her needs, and
cast her eyes slowly round the room. Madame Thénardier was whispering
to her husband and counting over some money; Ponine and Zelma were
playing with the cat; the travellers were eating or drinking or
singing; not a glance was fixed on her. She had not a moment to lose;
she crept out from under the table on her hands and knees, made sure
once more that no one was watching her; then she slipped quickly up to
the doll and seized it. An instant later she was in her place again,
seated motionless, and only turned so as to cast a shadow on the doll
which she held in her arms. The happiness of playing with a doll was so
rare for her that it contained all the violence of voluptuousness.
No one had seen her, except the traveller, who was slowly devouring his
meagre supper.
This joy lasted about a quarter of an hour.
But with all the precautions that Cosette had taken she did not
perceive that one of the doll’s legs stuck out and that the fire on the
hearth lighted it up very vividly. That pink and shining foot,
projecting from the shadow, suddenly struck the eye of Azelma, who said
to Éponine, “Look! sister.”
The two little girls paused in stupefaction; Cosette had dared to take
their doll!
Éponine rose, and, without releasing the cat, she ran to her mother,
and began to tug at her skirt.
“Let me alone!” said her mother; “what do you want?”
“Mother,” said the child, “look there!”
And she pointed to Cosette.
Cosette, absorbed in the ecstasies of possession, no longer saw or
heard anything.
Madame Thénardier’s countenance assumed that peculiar expression which
is composed of the terrible mingled with the trifles of life, and which
has caused this style of woman to be named _Megaeras_.
On this occasion, wounded pride exasperated her wrath still further.
Cosette had overstepped all bounds; Cosette had laid violent hands on
the doll belonging to “these young ladies.” A czarina who should see a
muzhik trying on her imperial son’s blue ribbon would wear no other
face.
She shrieked in a voice rendered hoarse with indignation:—
“Cosette!”
Cosette started as though the earth had trembled beneath her; she
turned round.
“Cosette!” repeated the Thénardier.
Cosette took the doll and laid it gently on the floor with a sort of
veneration, mingled with despair; then, without taking her eyes from
it, she clasped her hands, and, what is terrible to relate of a child
of that age, she wrung them; then—not one of the emotions of the day,
neither the trip to the forest, nor the weight of the bucket of water,
nor the loss of the money, nor the sight of the whip, nor even the sad
words which she had heard Madame Thénardier utter had been able to
wring this from her—she wept; she burst out sobbing.
Meanwhile, the traveller had risen to his feet.
“What is the matter?” he said to the Thénardier.
“Don’t you see?” said the Thénardier, pointing to the _corpus delicti_
which lay at Cosette’s feet.
“Well, what of it?” resumed the man.
“That beggar,” replied the Thénardier, “has permitted herself to touch
the children’s doll!”
“All this noise for that!” said the man; “well, what if she did play
with that doll?”
“She touched it with her dirty hands!” pursued the Thénardier, “with
her frightful hands!”
Here Cosette redoubled her sobs.
“Will you stop your noise?” screamed the Thénardier.
The man went straight to the street door, opened it, and stepped out.
As soon as he had gone, the Thénardier profited by his absence to give
Cosette a hearty kick under the table, which made the child utter loud
cries.
The door opened again, the man reappeared; he carried in both hands the
fabulous doll which we have mentioned, and which all the village brats
had been staring at ever since the morning, and he set it upright in
front of Cosette, saying:—
“Here; this is for you.”
It must be supposed that in the course of the hour and more which he
had spent there he had taken confused notice through his reverie of
that toy shop, lighted up by fire-pots and candles so splendidly that
it was visible like an illumination through the window of the
drinking-shop.
Cosette raised her eyes; she gazed at the man approaching her with that
doll as she might have gazed at the sun; she heard the unprecedented
words, “It is for you”; she stared at him; she stared at the doll; then
she slowly retreated, and hid herself at the extreme end, under the
table in a corner of the wall.
She no longer cried; she no longer wept; she had the appearance of no
longer daring to breathe.
The Thénardier, Éponine, and Azelma were like statues also; the very
drinkers had paused; a solemn silence reigned through the whole room.
Madame Thénardier, petrified and mute, recommenced her conjectures:
“Who is that old fellow? Is he a poor man? Is he a millionaire? Perhaps
he is both; that is to say, a thief.”
The face of the male Thénardier presented that expressive fold which
accentuates the human countenance whenever the dominant instinct
appears there in all its bestial force. The tavern-keeper stared
alternately at the doll and at the traveller; he seemed to be scenting
out the man, as he would have scented out a bag of money. This did not
last longer than the space of a flash of lightning. He stepped up to
his wife and said to her in a low voice:—
“That machine costs at least thirty francs. No nonsense. Down on your
belly before that man!”
Gross natures have this in common with _naïve_ natures, that they
possess no transition state.
“Well, Cosette,” said the Thénardier, in a voice that strove to be
sweet, and which was composed of the bitter honey of malicious women,
“aren’t you going to take your doll?”
Cosette ventured to emerge from her hole.
“The gentleman has given you a doll, my little Cosette,” said
Thénardier, with a caressing air. “Take it; it is yours.”
Cosette gazed at the marvellous doll in a sort of terror. Her face was
still flooded with tears, but her eyes began to fill, like the sky at
daybreak, with strange beams of joy. What she felt at that moment was a
little like what she would have felt if she had been abruptly told,
“Little one, you are the Queen of France.”
It seemed to her that if she touched that doll, lightning would dart
from it.
This was true, up to a certain point, for she said to herself that the
Thénardier would scold and beat her.
Nevertheless, the attraction carried the day. She ended by drawing near
and murmuring timidly as she turned towards Madame Thénardier:—
“May I, Madame?”
No words can render that air, at once despairing, terrified, and
ecstatic.
“Pardi!” cried the Thénardier, “it is yours. The gentleman has given it
to you.”
“Truly, sir?” said Cosette. “Is it true? Is the ‘lady’ mine?”
The stranger’s eyes seemed to be full of tears. He appeared to have
reached that point of emotion where a man does not speak for fear lest
he should weep. He nodded to Cosette, and placed the “lady’s” hand in
her tiny hand.
Cosette hastily withdrew her hand, as though that of the “lady”
scorched her, and began to stare at the floor. We are forced to add
that at that moment she stuck out her tongue immoderately. All at once
she wheeled round and seized the doll in a transport.
“I shall call her Catherine,” she said.
It was an odd moment when Cosette’s rags met and clasped the ribbons
and fresh pink muslins of the doll.
“Madame,” she resumed, “may I put her on a chair?”
“Yes, my child,” replied the Thénardier.
It was now the turn of Éponine and Azelma to gaze at Cosette with envy.
Cosette placed Catherine on a chair, then seated herself on the floor
in front of her, and remained motionless, without uttering a word, in
an attitude of contemplation.
“Play, Cosette,” said the stranger.
“Oh! I am playing,” returned the child.
This stranger, this unknown individual, who had the air of a visit
which Providence was making on Cosette, was the person whom the
Thénardier hated worse than any one in the world at that moment.
However, it was necessary to control herself. Habituated as she was to
dissimulation through endeavoring to copy her husband in all his
actions, these emotions were more than she could endure. She made haste
to send her daughters to bed, then she asked the man’s _permission_ to
send Cosette off also; “for she has worked hard all day,” she added
with a maternal air. Cosette went off to bed, carrying Catherine in her
arms.
From time to time the Thénardier went to the other end of the room
where her husband was, to _relieve her soul_, as she said. She
exchanged with her husband words which were all the more furious
because she dared not utter them aloud.
“Old beast! What has he got in his belly, to come and upset us in this
manner! To want that little monster to play! to give away forty-franc
dolls to a jade that I would sell for forty sous, so I would! A little
more and he will be saying _Your Majesty_ to her, as though to the
Duchesse de Berry! Is there any sense in it? Is he mad, then, that
mysterious old fellow?”
“Why! it is perfectly simple,” replied Thénardier, “if that amuses him!
It amuses you to have the little one work; it amuses him to have her
play. He’s all right. A traveller can do what he pleases when he pays
for it. If the old fellow is a philanthropist, what is that to you? If
he is an imbecile, it does not concern you. What are you worrying for,
so long as he has money?”
The language of a master, and the reasoning of an innkeeper, neither of
which admitted of any reply.
The man had placed his elbows on the table, and resumed his thoughtful
attitude. All the other travellers, both pedlers and carters, had
withdrawn a little, and had ceased singing. They were staring at him
from a distance, with a sort of respectful awe. This poorly dressed
man, who drew “hind-wheels” from his pocket with so much ease, and who
lavished gigantic dolls on dirty little brats in wooden shoes, was
certainly a magnificent fellow, and one to be feared.
Many hours passed. The midnight mass was over, the chimes had ceased,
the drinkers had taken their departure, the drinking-shop was closed,
the public room was deserted, the fire extinct, the stranger still
remained in the same place and the same attitude. From time to time he
changed the elbow on which he leaned. That was all; but he had not said
a word since Cosette had left the room.
The Thénardiers alone, out of politeness and curiosity, had remained in
the room.
“Is he going to pass the night in that fashion?” grumbled the
Thénardier. When two o’clock in the morning struck, she declared
herself vanquished, and said to her husband, “I’m going to bed. Do as
you like.” Her husband seated himself at a table in the corner, lighted
a candle, and began to read the _Courrier Français_.
A good hour passed thus. The worthy inn-keeper had perused the
_Courrier Français_ at least three times, from the date of the number
to the printer’s name. The stranger did not stir.
Thénardier fidgeted, coughed, spit, blew his nose, and creaked his
chair. Not a movement on the man’s part. “Is he asleep?” thought
Thénardier. The man was not asleep, but nothing could arouse him.
At last Thénardier took off his cap, stepped gently up to him, and
ventured to say:—
“Is not Monsieur going to his repose?”
_Not going to bed_ would have seemed to him excessive and familiar. _To