Les Misérables
repose_ smacked of luxury and respect. These words possess the
mysterious and admirable property of swelling the bill on the following
day. A chamber where one _sleeps_ costs twenty sous; a chamber in which
one _reposes_ costs twenty francs.
“Well!” said the stranger, “you are right. Where is your stable?”
“Sir!” exclaimed Thénardier, with a smile, “I will conduct you, sir.”
He took the candle; the man picked up his bundle and cudgel, and
Thénardier conducted him to a chamber on the first floor, which was of
rare splendor, all furnished in mahogany, with a low bedstead,
curtained with red calico.
“What is this?” said the traveller.
“It is really our bridal chamber,” said the tavern-keeper. “My wife and
I occupy another. This is only entered three or four times a year.”
“I should have liked the stable quite as well,” said the man, abruptly.
Thénardier pretended not to hear this unamiable remark.
He lighted two perfectly fresh wax candles which figured on the
chimney-piece. A very good fire was flickering on the hearth.
On the chimney-piece, under a glass globe, stood a woman’s head-dress
in silver wire and orange flowers.
“And what is this?” resumed the stranger.
“That, sir,” said Thénardier, “is my wife’s wedding bonnet.”
The traveller surveyed the object with a glance which seemed to say,
“There really was a time, then, when that monster was a maiden?”
Thénardier lied, however. When he had leased this paltry building for
the purpose of converting it into a tavern, he had found this chamber
decorated in just this manner, and had purchased the furniture and
obtained the orange flowers at second hand, with the idea that this
would cast a graceful shadow on “his spouse,” and would result in what
the English call respectability for his house.
When the traveller turned round, the host had disappeared. Thénardier
had withdrawn discreetly, without venturing to wish him a good night,
as he did not wish to treat with disrespectful cordiality a man whom he
proposed to fleece royally the following morning.
The inn-keeper 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
to him:—
“Do you know, I’m going to turn Cosette out of doors to-morrow.”
Thénardier replied coldly:—
“How you do go on!”
They exchanged no further words, and a few moments later their candle
was extinguished.
As for the traveller, he had deposited his cudgel and his bundle in a
corner. The landlord once gone, he threw himself into an armchair and
remained for some time buried in thought. Then he removed his shoes,
took one of the two candles, blew out the other, opened the door, and
quitted the room, gazing about him like a person who is in search of
something. He traversed a corridor and came upon a staircase. There he
heard a very faint and gentle sound like the breathing of a child. He
followed this sound, and came to a sort of triangular recess built
under the staircase, or rather formed by the staircase itself. This
recess was nothing else than the space under the steps. There, in the
midst of all sorts of old papers and potsherds, among dust and spiders’
webs, was a bed—if one can call by the name of bed a straw pallet so
full of holes as to display the straw, and a coverlet so tattered as to
show the pallet. No sheets. This was placed on the floor.
In this bed Cosette was sleeping.
The man approached and gazed down upon her.
Cosette was in a profound sleep; she was fully dressed. In the winter
she did not undress, in order that she might not be so cold.
Against her breast was pressed the doll, whose large eyes, wide open,
glittered in the dark. From time to time she gave vent to a deep sigh
as though she were on the point of waking, and she strained the doll
almost convulsively in her arms. Beside her bed there was only one of
her wooden shoes.
A door which stood open near Cosette’s pallet permitted a view of a
rather large, dark room. The stranger stepped into it. At the further
extremity, through a glass door, he saw two small, very white beds.
They belonged to Éponine and Azelma. Behind these beds, and half
hidden, stood an uncurtained wicker cradle, in which the little boy who
had cried all the evening lay asleep.
The stranger conjectured that this chamber connected with that of the
Thénardier pair. He was on the point of retreating when his eye fell
upon the fireplace—one of those vast tavern chimneys where there is
always so little fire when there is any fire at all, and which are so
cold to look at. There was no fire in this one, there was not even
ashes; but there was something which attracted the stranger’s gaze,
nevertheless. It was two tiny children’s shoes, coquettish in shape and
unequal in size. The traveller recalled the graceful and immemorial
custom in accordance with which children place their shoes in the
chimney on Christmas eve, there to await in the darkness some sparkling
gift from their good fairy. Éponine and Azelma had taken care not to
omit this, and each of them had set one of her shoes on the hearth.
The traveller bent over them.
The fairy, that is to say, their mother, had already paid her visit,
and in each he saw a brand-new and shining ten-sou piece.
The man straightened himself up, and was on the point of withdrawing,
when far in, in the darkest corner of the hearth, he caught sight of
another object. He looked at it, and recognized a wooden shoe, a
frightful shoe of the coarsest description, half dilapidated and all
covered with ashes and dried mud. It was Cosette’s sabot. Cosette, with
that touching trust of childhood, which can always be deceived yet
never discouraged, had placed her shoe on the hearth-stone also.
Hope in a child who has never known anything but despair is a sweet and
touching thing.
There was nothing in this wooden shoe.
The stranger fumbled in his waistcoat, bent over and placed a louis
d’or in Cosette’s shoe.
Then he regained his own chamber with the stealthy tread of a wolf.
CHAPTER IX— THÉNARDIER AND HIS MANŒUVRES
On the following morning, two hours at least before day-break,
Thénardier, seated beside a candle in the public room of the tavern,
pen in hand, was making out the bill for the traveller with the yellow
coat.
His wife, standing beside him, and half bent over him, was following
him with her eyes. They exchanged not a word. On the one hand, there
was profound meditation, on the other, the religious admiration with
which one watches the birth and development of a marvel of the human
mind. A noise was audible in the house; it was the Lark sweeping the
stairs.
After the lapse of a good quarter of an hour, and some erasures,
Thénardier produced the following masterpiece:—
BILL OF THE GENTLEMAN IN No. 1.
Supper . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 francs.
Chamber . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 ”
Candle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 ”
Fire . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 ”
Service . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 ”
———
Total . . . . . . 23 francs.
Service was written _servisse_.
“Twenty-three francs!” cried the woman, with an enthusiasm which was
mingled with some hesitation.
Like all great artists, Thénardier was dissatisfied.
“Peuh!” he exclaimed.
It was the accent of Castlereagh auditing France’s bill at the Congress
of Vienna.
“Monsieur Thénardier, you are right; he certainly owes that,” murmured
the wife, who was thinking of the doll bestowed on Cosette in the
presence of her daughters. “It is just, but it is too much. He will not
pay it.”
Thénardier laughed coldly, as usual, and said:—
“He will pay.”
This laugh was the supreme assertion of certainty and authority. That
which was asserted in this manner must needs be so. His wife did not
insist.
She set about arranging the table; her husband paced the room. A moment
later he added:—
“I owe full fifteen hundred francs!”
He went and seated himself in the chimney-corner, meditating, with his
feet among the warm ashes.
“Ah! by the way,” resumed his wife, “you don’t forget that I’m going to
turn Cosette out of doors to-day? The monster! She breaks my heart with
that doll of hers! I’d rather marry Louis XVIII. than keep her another
day in the house!”
Thénardier lighted his pipe, and replied between two puffs:—
“You will hand that bill to the man.”
Then he went out.
Hardly had he left the room when the traveller entered.
Thénardier instantly reappeared behind him and remained motionless in
the half-open door, visible only to his wife.
The yellow man carried his bundle and his cudgel in his hand.
“Up so early?” said Madame Thénardier; “is Monsieur leaving us
already?”
As she spoke thus, she was twisting the bill about in her hands with an
embarrassed air, and making creases in it with her nails. Her hard face
presented a shade which was not habitual with it,—timidity and
scruples.
To present such a bill to a man who had so completely the air “of a
poor wretch” seemed difficult to her.
The traveller appeared to be preoccupied and absent-minded. He
replied:—
“Yes, Madame, I am going.”
“So Monsieur has no business in Montfermeil?”
“No, I was passing through. That is all. What do I owe you, Madame,” he
added.
The Thénardier silently handed him the folded bill.
The man unfolded the paper and glanced at it; but his thoughts were
evidently elsewhere.
“Madame,” he resumed, “is business good here in Montfermeil?”
“So so, Monsieur,” replied the Thénardier, stupefied at not witnessing
another sort of explosion.
She continued, in a dreary and lamentable tone:—
“Oh! Monsieur, times are so hard! and then, we have so few bourgeois in
the neighborhood! All the people are poor, you see. If we had not, now
and then, some rich and generous travellers like Monsieur, we should
not get along at all. We have so many expenses. Just see, that child is
costing us our very eyes.”
“What child?”
“Why, the little one, you know! Cosette—the Lark, as she is called
hereabouts!”
“Ah!” said the man.
She went on:—
“How stupid these peasants are with their nicknames! She has more the
air of a bat than of a lark. You see, sir, we do not ask charity, and
we cannot bestow it. We earn nothing and we have to pay out a great
deal. The license, the imposts, the door and window tax, the
hundredths! Monsieur is aware that the government demands a terrible
deal of money. And then, I have my daughters. I have no need to bring
up other people’s children.”
The man resumed, in that voice which he strove to render indifferent,
and in which there lingered a tremor:—
“What if one were to rid you of her?”
“Who? Cosette?”
“Yes.”
The landlady’s red and violent face brightened up hideously.
“Ah! sir, my dear sir, take her, keep her, lead her off, carry her
away, sugar her, stuff her with truffles, drink her, eat her, and the
blessings of the good holy Virgin and of all the saints of paradise be
upon you!”
“Agreed.”
“Really! You will take her away?”
“I will take her away.”
“Immediately?”
“Immediately. Call the child.”
“Cosette!” screamed the Thénardier.
“In the meantime,” pursued the man, “I will pay you what I owe you. How
much is it?”
He cast a glance on the bill, and could not restrain a start of
surprise:—
“Twenty-three francs!”
He looked at the landlady, and repeated:—
“Twenty-three francs?”
There was in the enunciation of these words, thus repeated, an accent
between an exclamation and an interrogation point.
The Thénardier had had time to prepare herself for the shock. She
replied, with assurance:—