Les Miserables (abridged) (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) (48 page)

The man approached and looked at her.

Cosette was sleeping soundly; she was dressed. In the winter she did not undress on account of the cold. She held the doll clasped in her arms; its large open eyes shone in the obscurity. From time to time she heaved a deep sigh, as if she were about to wake, and she hugged the doll almost convulsively. There was only one of her wooden shoes at the side of her bed. An open door near Cosette’s nook disclosed a large dark room. The stranger entered. At the further end, through a glass window, he perceived two little beds with very white spreads. They were those of Azelma and Eponine. Half hid behind these beds was a willow cradle without curtains, in which the little boy who had cried all the evening was sleeping.

The stranger conjectured that this room communicated with that of the Thénardiers. He was about to withdraw when his eye fell upon the fireplace, one of those huge tavern fireplaces where there is always so little fire, when there is a fire, and which are so cold to look upon. In this one there was no fire, there were not even any ashes. What there was, however, attracted the traveller’s attention. It was two little children’s shoes, of coquettish shape and of different sizes. The traveller remembered the graceful and immemorial custom of children putting their shoes in the fireplace on Christmas night, to wait there in the darkness in expectation of some shining gift from their good fairy. Eponine and Azelma had taken good care not to forget this, and each had put one of her shoes in the fireplace.

The traveller bent over them.

The fairy—that is to say, the mother—had already made her visit, and shining in each shoe was a beautiful new ten-sous coin.

The man rose up and was on the point of going away, when he perceived further along, by itself, in the darkest corner of the fireplace, another object. He looked, and recognised a shoe, a horrid wooden shoe of the clumsiest sort, half broken and covered with ashes and dried mud. It was Cosette’s shoe. Cosette, with that touching confidence of childhood which can always be deceived without ever being discouraged, had also placed her shoe in the fireplace.

What a sublime and sweet thing is hope in a child who has never known anything but despair!

There was nothing in this wooden shoe.

The stranger fumbled in his waistcoat, bent over, and dropped into Cosette’s shoe a gold Louis.

Then he went back to his room with stealthy tread.

ON THE following morning, at least two hours before day, Thénardier, seated at a table in the bar-room, a candle by his side with pen in hand, was making out the bill of the traveller in the yellow coat.

His wife was standing, half bent over him, following him with her eyes. Not a word passed between them. It was, on one side, a profound meditation, on the other that religious admiration with which we observe a marvel of the human mind spring up and expand. A noise was heard in the house; it was the lark, sweeping the stairs.

After a good quarter of an hour and some erasures, Thénardier produced this masterpiece.

 

Service was written
servisse.

“Twenty-three francs!” exclaimed the woman, with an enthusiasm which was mingled with some hesitation.

Like all great artists, Thénardier was not satisfied.

“Pooh!” said he.

It was the accent of Castlereagh drawing up for the Congress of Vienna the bill which France was to pay.

“Monsieur Thenardier, you are right, he deserves it,” murmured the woman, thinking of the doll given to Cosette in the presence of her daughters; “it is right! but it’s too much. He won’t pay it.”

Thénardier put on his cold laugh, and said: “He will pay it.”

This laugh was the highest sign of certainty and authority. What was thus said, must be. The woman did not insist. She began to arrange the tables; the husband walked back and forth in the room. A moment after he added:

“I owe, at least, fifteen hundred francs!”

He seated himself thoughtfully in the chimney corner, his feet in the warm ashes.

“Ah ha!” replied the woman, “you don’t forget that I kick Cosette out of the house to-day? The monster! it tears my vitals to see her with her doll! I would rather marry Louis XVIII, than keep her in the house another day!”

Thénardier lighted his pipe, and answered between two puffs:

“You’ll give the bill to the man.”

Then he went out.

He was scarcely out of the room when the traveller came in.

Thénardier reappeared immediately behind him, and remained motionless in the half-open door, visible only to his wife.

The yellow man carried his staff and bundle in his hand.

“Up so soon!” said the Thénardiess; “is monsieur going to leave us already?”

While speaking, she turned the bill in her hands with an embarrassed look, and made creases in it with her nails. Her hard face exhibited a shade of timidity and doubt that was not habitual.

To present such a bill to a man who had so perfectly the appearance of “a pauper” seemed too awkward to her.

The traveller appeared pre-occupied and absent-minded.

He answered:

“Yes, madame, I am going away.”

“Monsieur, then, had no business at Montfermeil?” replied she.

“No, I am passing through; that is all. Madame,” added he, “what do I owe?”

The Thénardiess, without answering, handed him the folded bill.

The man unfolded the paper and looked at it; but his thoughts were evidently elsewhere.

“Madame,” replied he, “do you do a good business in Montfermeil?”

“So-so, monsieur,” answered the Thénardiess, stupefied at seeing no other explosion.

She continued in a mournful and lamenting strain:

“Oh! monsieur, the times are very hard, and then we have so few rich people around here! It is a very little place, you see. If we only had rich travellers now and then, like monsieur! We have so many expenses! Why, that little girl eats us out of house and home.”

“What little girl?”

“Why, the little girl you know! Cosette! the Lark, as they call her about here!”

“Ah!” said the man.

She continued:

“How stupid these peasants are with their nicknames! She looks more like a bat than a lark. You see, monsieur, we don’t ask charity, but we are not able to give it. We make nothing, and have a great deal to pay. The licence, the excise, the doors and windows, the tax on everything! Monsieur knows that the government demands a deal of money. And then I have my own girls. I have nothing to spend on other people’s children.”

The man replied in a voice which he endeavoured to render indifferent, and in which there was a slight tremulousness.

“Suppose you were relieved of her?”

“Who? Cosette?”

“Yes.”

The red and violent face of the woman became illumined with a hideous expression.

“Ah, monsieur! my good monsieur! take her, keep her, take her away, carry her off, sugar her, stuff her, drink her, eat her, and be blessed by the holy Virgin and all the saints in Paradise!”

“Agreed.”

“Really! you will take her away?”

“I will.”

“Immediately?”

“Immediately. Call the child.”

“Cosette!” cried the Thénardiess.

“In the meantime,” continued the man, “I will pay my bill. How much is it?”

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

“Twenty-three francs?”

He looked at the hostess and repeated:

“Twenty-three francs?”

There was, in the pronunciation of these two sentences, thus repeated, the accent which lies between the point of exclamation and the point of interrogation.

The Thénardiess had had time to prepare herself for the shock. She replied with assurance:

“Yes, of course, monsieur! it is twenty-three francs.”

The stranger placed five five-franc coins upon the table.

“Go for the little girl,” said he.

At this moment Thénardier advanced into the middle of the room and said:

“Monsieur owes twenty-six sous.”
²

“Twenty-six sous!” exclaimed the woman.

“Twenty sous for the room,” continued Thénardier coldly, “and six for supper. As to the little girl. I must have some talk with monsieur about that. Leave us, wife.”

The Thénardiess was dazzled by one of those unexpected flashes which emanate from talent. She felt that the great actor had entered upon the scene, answered not a word, and went out.

As soon as they were alone, Thénardier offered the traveller a chair. The traveller sat down, but Thénardier remained standing and his face assumed a singular expression of good-nature and simplicity.

“Monsieur,” said he, “listen, I must say that I adore this child.”

The stranger looked at him steadily.

“What child?”

Thénardier continued:

“How strangely we become attached! What is all this silver? Take back your money. This child I adore.”

“Who is that?” asked the stranger.

“Oh, our little Cosette! And you wish to take her away from us? Indeed, I speak frankly, as true as you are an honourable man, I cannot consent to it. I should miss her. I have had her since she was very small. It is true, she costs us money; it is true she has her faults, it is true we are not rich, it is true I paid four hundred francs for medicines at one time when she was sick. But we must do something for God. She has neither father nor mother; I have brought her up. I have bread enough for her and for myself. In fact, I must keep this child. You understand, we have affections; I am a good beast; myself, I do not reason; I love this little girl; my wife is impulsive, but she loves her also. You see, she is like our own child. I feel the need of her prattle in the house.”

The stranger was looking steadily at him all the while. He continued:

“Pardon me, excuse me, monsieur, but one does not give his child like that to a traveller. Isn’t it true that I am right? After that, I don’t say—you are rich and have the appearance of a very fine man—if it is for her advantage, —but I must know about it. You understand? On the supposition that I should let her go and sacrifice my own feelings, I should want to know where she is going. I would not want to lose sight of her, I should want to know who she was with, that I might come and see her now and then, and that she might know that her good foster-father was still watching over her. Finally, there are things which are not possible. I do not know even your name. If you should take her away, I should say, alas for the little Lark, where has she gone? I must, at least, see some poor rag of paper, a bit of a passport, something.”

The stranger, without removing from him this gaze which went, so to speak, to the bottom of his conscience, answered in a severe and firm tone.

“Monsieur Thénardier, people do not take a passport to come five leagues from Paris. If I take Cosette, I take her, that is all. You will not know my name, you will not know my abode, you will not know where she goes, and my intention is that she shall never see you again in her life. I’ll cut the rope she’s tethered by, and off she goes. Do you agree to that? Yes or no?”

As demons and genii recognise by certain signs the presence of a superior God, Thénardier comprehended that he was to deal with one who was very powerful. It came like an intuition; he understood it with his clear and quick sagacity; although during the evening he had been drinking with the waggoners, smoking, and singing bawdy songs, still he was observing the stranger all the while, watching him like a cat, and studying him like a mathematician. He had been observing him on his own account, for pleasure and by instinct, and at the same time lying in wait as if he had been paid for it. Not a gesture, not a movement of the man in the yellow coat had escaped him. Before even the stranger had so clearly shown his interest in Cosette, Thénardier had divined it. He had surprised the searching glances of the old man constantly returning to the child. Why this interest? What was this man? Why, with so much money in his purse, this miserable dress? These were questions which he put to himself without being able to answer them, and they irritated him. He had been thinking it over all night. This could not be Cosette’s father. Was it a grandfather? Then why did he not make himself known at once? When a man has a right, he shows it. This man evidently had no right to Cosette. Then who was he? Thénardier was lost in conjectures. He caught glimpses of everything, but saw nothing. However it might be, when he commenced the conversation with this man, sure that there was a secret in all this, sure that the man had an interest in remaining unknown, he felt himself strong; at the stranger’s clear and firm answer, when he saw that this mysterious personage was mysterious and nothing more, he felt weak. He was expecting nothing of the kind. His conjectures were put to flight. He rallied his ideas. He weighed all in a second. Thénardier was one of those men who comprehend a situation at a glance. He decided that this was the moment to advance straightforward and swiftly. He did what great captains do at that decisive instant which they alone can recognise; he unmasked his battery at once.

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

The stranger took from his side-pocket an old black leather pocket-book, opened it, and drew forth three bank bills which he placed upon the table. He then rested his large thumb on these bills, and said to the tavern-keeper.