Les Misérables, v. 2/5: Cosette

"You ought to have knocked."

"I did do so, but he would not open."

"I shall know to-morrow whether that is the truth," said her mistress; "and if it is not, look out, that's all. In the mean while give me back my fifteen-sous piece."

Cosette plunged her hand into the pocket of her apron and turned green: the coin was no longer in it.

"Well," her mistress said, "did you not hear me?"

Cosette turned her pocket out, but there was nothing in it: what could have become of the money? The wretched little creature could not find a word to say; she was petrified.

"Have you lost it," her mistress asked, "or are you trying to rob me?"

At the same time she stretched out her hand to the cat-o'-nine-tails; this formidable gesture restored Cosette the strength to cry,—

"Mercy, Madame! I will never do it again."

Madame Thénardier took down the whip.

The man in the yellow coat had been feeling in his waistcoat pocket, though no one noticed it. Moreover, the other guests were drinking or card-playing, and paid no attention to him. Cosette had retreated in agony to the chimney-corner, shivering to make herself as little as she could, and protect her poor half-naked limbs. Her mistress raised her arm.

"I beg your pardon, Madame," said the man, "but just now I saw something fall out of the little girl's pocket and roll away. It may be that."

At the same time he stooped and appeared to be searching for a moment.

"Yes, here it is," he continued, as he rose and held out a coin to the landlady.

"Yes, that's it," she said.

It was not the real coin, it was a twenty-sous piece, but Madame made a profit by the transaction. She put it in her pocket, and confined herself to giving the child a stern glance, saying,—"That had better not happen again."

Cosette returned to what her mistress called her niche, and her large eyes, fixed on the strange traveller, began to assume an expression they had never had before. It was no longer a simple astonishment, but a sort of stupefied confidence was mingled with it.

"Do you want any supper?" the landlady asked the traveller.

He did not reply, but seemed to be lost in thought. "What can this man be?" she muttered to herself. "He is some wretched beggar who has not a penny to pay for his supper. Will he be able to pay for his bed-room? It is lucky, after all, that he did not think of stealing the silver coin that was on the ground."

At this moment a door opened, and Éponine and Azelma came in. They were really two pretty little girls, of the middle class rather than peasants, and very charming, one with her auburn well-smoothed tresses, the other with long black plaits hanging down her back; both were quick, clean, plump, fresh, and pleasant to look on through their beaming health. They were warmly clothed, but with such maternal art that the thickness of the stuff did not remove anything of the coquetry of the style; winter was foreseen, but spring was not effaced. In their dress, their gayety, and the noise which they made, there was a certain queenliness. When they came in, their mother said to them in a scolding voice, which was full of adoration, "There you are, then."

Then, drawing them on to her knees in turn, smoothing their hair, re-tying their ribbons, and letting them go with that gentle shake which is peculiar to mothers, she exclaimed, "How smart they are!" They sat down by the fire-side, with a doll which they turned over on their knees with all sorts of joyous prattle. At times Cosette raised her eyes from her knitting and mournfully watched their playing, Éponine and Azelma did not look at Cosette, for to them she was like the dog. These three little girls did not count four-and-twenty years between them, and already represented human society,—on one side envy, on the other, disdain. The doll was very old and broken, but it did not appear the less wonderful to Cosette, who never in her life possessed a doll,—a "real doll," to employ an expression which all children will understand. All at once the landlady, who was going about the room, noticed that Cosette was idling, and watching the children instead of working.

"Ah, I have caught you," she exclaimed; "that's the way you work, is it? I'll make you work with the cat-o'-nine tails."

The stranger, without leaving his chair, turned to Madame Thénardier.

"Oh, Madame," he said with an almost timid smile, "let her play!"

Such a wish would have been a command from any traveller who had ordered a good supper and drunk a couple of bottles of wine, and who did not look like a beggar. But the landlady did not tolerate a man who had such a hat, having a desire, and one who wore such a coat, daring to have a will of his own! Hence she answered sharply,—

"She must work, since she eats; I do not keep her to do nothing."

"What is she doing, pray?" the stranger continued, in that gentle voice which formed such a strange contrast with his beggar clothes and porter shoulders.

The landlady deigned to reply,—

"She is knitting stockings, if you please, for my little girls, who have none, so to speak, and are forced to go about barefooted."

The man looked at Cosette's poor red feet, and said,—

"When will she have finished that pair of stockings?"

"She has three or four good days' work, the idle slut!"

"And how much may such a pair be worth when finished?"

The landlady gave him a contemptuous glance.

"At least thirty sous."

"Will you sell them to me for five francs?" the man continued.

"Pardieu!" a carrier who was listening exclaimed, with a coarse laugh, "I should think so,—five balls!"

Thénardier thought it his duty to speak.

"Yes, sir, if such be your fancy, you can have the pair of stockings for five francs; we cannot refuse travellers anything."

"Cash payment," the landlady said in her peremptory voice.

"I buy the pair of stockings," the man said, and added, as he drew a five-franc piece from his pocket and laid it on the table, "I pay for them."

Then he turned to Cosette,—

"Your labor is now mine; so play, my child."

The carrier was so affected by the five-franc piece that he left his glass and hurried up.

"It is real," he exclaimed, after examining it; "a true hind-wheel, and no mistake."

Thénardier came up and silently put the coin in his pocket. The landlady could make no answer, but she bit her lips, and her face assumed an expression of hatred. Cosette was trembling, but still ventured to ask,—

"Is it true, Madame? May I play?"

"Play!" her mistress said, in a terrible voice.

And while her lips thanked the landlady, all her little soul thanked the traveller. Thénardier had returned to his glass, and his wife whispered in his ear,—

"What can this yellow man be?"

"I have seen," Thénardier replied, with a sovereign air, "millionnaires who wore a coat like his."

Cosette had laid down her needle, but did not dare leave her place, for, as a rule, she moved as little as possible. She took from a box behind her a few old rags and her little leaden sword, Éponine and Azelma paid no attention to what was going on, for they were carrying out a very important operation. They had seized the cat, thrown the doll on the ground, and Éponine, who was the elder, was wrapping up the kitten, in spite of its meawings and writhings, in a quantity of red and blue rags. While performing this serious and difficult task, she was saying to her sister in the sweet and adorable language of children, the grace of which, like the glistening of butterflies' wings, disappears when you try to fix it,—

"This doll, sister, is more amusing than the other, you see, for it moves, cries, and is warm; so we will play with it. It is my little daughter, and I am a lady; you will call upon me, and look at it. By degrees you will see its whiskers, and that will surprise you, and then you will see its ears and its tail, and that will surprise you too, and you will say to me, 'Oh, my goodness!' and I shall answer, 'Yes, Madame, it is a little child I have like that; little children are so at present.'"

Azelma listened to Éponine in admiration; in the mean while the topers had begun singing an obscene song at which they laughed till the ceiling shook, Thénardier encouraging and accompanying them. In the same way as birds make a nest of everything, children make a doll of no matter what. While Éponine and Azelma were wrapping up the kitten, Cosette on her side was performing the same operation on her sword. This done, she laid it on her arm, and sang softly to lull it to sleep. A doll is one of the most imperious wants, and at the same time one of the most delicious instincts, of feminine childhood. To clean, clothe, adorn, dress, undress, dress again, teach, scold a little, nurse, lull, send to sleep, and imagine that something is somebody,—the whole future of a woman is contained in this. While dreaming and prattling, making little trousseaux and cradles, while sewing little frocks and aprons, the child becomes a girl, the girl becomes a maiden, and the maiden a woman. The first child is a continuation of the last doll. A little girl without a doll is nearly as unhappy and quite as impossible as a wife without children; Cosette, therefore, made a doll of her sword. The landlady, in the mean while, walked up to the "yellow man." "My husband is right," she thought, "it is perhaps M. Lafitte. Some rich men are so whimsical." She leaned her elbow on the table and said, "Sir—"

At the word "Sir" the man turned round, for the female Thénardier had up to the present only addressed him as "My good man."

"You see, sir," she continued, assuming her gentle air, which was still more dreadful to see than her fierce look, "I am glad to see the child play, and do not oppose it, and it is all right for once, as you are generous. But, you see, she has nothing, and must work."

"Then, she is not a child of yours?" the man asked.

"Oh! Lord, no, sir; she is a poor little girl we took in out of charity. She is a sort of imbecile, and I think has water on the brain, for she has a big head. We do all we can for her; but we are not rich, and though we write to her people, we have not had an answer for six months. It looks as if the mother were dead."

"Ah!" said the man, and fell back into his reverie.

"The mother could n't have been much," the landlady added, "for she deserted her child."

During the whole of the conversation Cosette, as if an instinct warned her that she was being talked about, did not take her eyes off her mistress. She listened, and heard two or three indistinct words here and there. In the mean while, the drinkers, who were three parts intoxicated, struck up their unclean song again with redoubled gayety, and Madame Thénardier went to take part in the bursts of laughter. Cosette, under her table, looked at the fire, which was reflected in her fixed eyes; she had begun rocking the species of doll which she had made, and while lulling it to sleep, sang in a low voice,—"My mother is dead, my mother is dead, my mother is dead." On being pressed again by the landlady, the yellow man, the "millionnaire," consented to take some supper.

"What will you have, sir?"

"Bread and cheese."

"He is certainly a beggar," the landlady thought. The drunkards were still singing their song, and the child, under the table, still sang hers. All at once Cosette broke off: she turned, and perceived, lying on the ground a few paces from the kitchen table, the doll which the children had thrown down on taking up the kitten. She let the wrapped-up sword, which only half satisfied her, fall, and then slowly looked round the room. The landlady was whispering to her husband and reckoning some change, Éponine and Azelma were playing with the kitten; the guests were eating, drinking, or singing, and no one noticed her. She had not a moment to lose, so she crept on her hands and knees from under the table, assured herself once again that she was not watched, and seized the doll. A moment after she was back in her seat, and turned so that the doll which she held in her arms should be in the shadow. The happiness of playing with this doll was almost too much for her. No one had seen her, excepting the traveller, who was slowly eating his poor supper. This joy lasted nearly a quarter of an hour.

But in spite of the caution which Cosette took, she did not notice that one of the doll's feet was peeping out, and that the fire lit it up very distinctly. This pink luminous foot emerging from the glow suddenly caught the eye of Azelma, who said to Éponine, "Look, sister!"

The two little girls were stupefied. Cosette had dared to take their doll! Éponine rose, and without letting the cat go, ran to her mother and plucked the skirt of her dress.

"Let me be," said the mother; "what do you want now?"

"Mother," said the girl, "just look!"

And she pointed to Cosette, who, yielding entirely to the ecstasy of possession, saw and heard nothing more. The landlady's face assumed that peculiar expression which is composed of the terrible blended with the trifles of life, and which has caused such women to be christened Megæras. This time wounded pride exasperated her wrath: Cosette had leaped over all bounds, and had made an assault on the young ladies' doll. A czarina who saw a moujik trying on her Imperial son's blue ribbon would not have a different face. She cried in a voice which indignation rendered hoarse,—"Cosette!"

Cosette started as if the earth had trembled beneath her, and turned round.

"Cosette!" her mistress repeated.

Cosette gently laid the doll on the ground with a species of veneration mingled with despair; then, without taking her eyes off it, she clasped her hands, and, frightful to say of a child of her age, wrung them, and then burst into tears, a thing which none of the emotions of the day had caused,—neither the walk in the wood, the weight of the bucket, the loss of the coin, the sight of the lash, nor the harsh remarks of her mistress. The traveller had risen from his chair. "What is the matter?" he asked the landlady.

"Don't you see?" she replied, pointing to the corpus delicti which lay at Cosette's feet.

"Well, what?" the man continued.

"That wretch," the landlady answered, "has had the audacity to touch my children's doll!"

"So much noise about that!" the man said. "Well, suppose that she did play with the doll!"

"She has touched it with her dirty hands," the landlady continued,—"her frightful hands."

Here Cosette redoubled her sobs.

"Will you be quiet?" her mistress yelled.

The man went straight to the street door, opened it, and walked out; the landlady took advantage of his absence to give Cosette a kick under the table, which made her scream. The door opened again, and the man reappeared, carrying in his hands the fabulous doll to which we have alluded, and which all the village children had been contemplating since the morning. He placed it on its legs before Cosette, saying,—

"Here, this is for you."

We must suppose that, during the hour he had been sitting in a reverie, he had confusedly noticed the toyman's shop, which was so brilliantly lit with lamps and candles that it could be seen through the tap-room window like an illumination. Cosette raised her eyes: she had looked at the man coming toward her with the doll, as if he were the sun; she heard the extraordinary words "This is for you;" she looked at him, looked at the doll, then drew back slowly, and concealed herself entirely in a corner under the table. She did not cry, she did not speak, but looked as if she dared hardly breathe. The landlady, Éponine, and Azelma were so many statues: the topers themselves had stopped drinking, and there was a solemn silence in the tap-room. The mother, petrified and dumb, began her conjectures again. "Who is this man? Is he poor, or a millionnaire? He is, perhaps, both; that is to say, a thief." The husband's face offered that expressive wrinkle which marks the human face each time that the ruling instinct appears on it with all its bestial power. The landlord looked in turn at the doll and the traveller: he seemed to be sniffing round the man, as he would have done round a money-bag. This only lasted for a second; then he went up to his wife and whispered:

"That machine costs at least thirty francs. No nonsense; crawl in the dust before the man."

Coarse natures have this in common with simple natures, that they have no transitions.

"Well, Cosette," the landlady said, in a voice which strove to be gentle, and which was composed of the bitter honey of wicked women, "why don't you take your doll?"

Cosette ventured to crawl out of her hole.

"My little Cosette," her mistress continued fawningly, "this gentleman gives you the doll; so take it, for it is yours."

Cosette gazed at the wonderful doll with a sort of terror; her face was still bathed in tears, but her eyes were beginning to fill, like the sky at dawn, with strange rays of joy. What she felt at this moment was something like what she would have felt had some one suddenly said to her, "Little girl, you are Queen of France."

It seemed to her that if she touched this doll thunder would issue from it; and this was true to a certain point, for she said to herself that her mistress would scold and beat her. Still, the attraction gained the victory; she at length crawled up to the doll and murmured timidly as she turned to the landlady,—

"May I, Madame?"

No expression could render this air, which was at once despairing, terrified, and ravished.

"Of course," said her mistress, "since this gentleman gives it to you."

"Is it true, sir?" Cosette continued. "Is the lady really mine?"

The stranger's eyes were full of tears, and he seemed to have reached that point of emotion when a man does not speak in order that he may not weep. He nodded to Cosette, and placed the "lady's" little hand in hers. Cosette quickly drew back her hand as if the lady's burned her, and looked down at the brick floor. We are compelled to add that at this moment she put her tongue out to an enormous length; all at once she turned and passionately seized the doll.

"I will call her Catherine," she said.

It was a strange sight when Cosette's rags met and held the doll's ribbons and fresh muslins.

"May I put her in a chair, Madame?" she continued.

"Yes, my child," her mistress answered.

It was now the turn of Éponine and Azelma to look enviously at Cosette. She placed Catherine in a chair, and then sat down on the ground before her, motionless, without saying a word, and in a contemplative attitude.

"Play, Cosette," the stranger said.

"Oh, I am playing!" the child answered.

This unknown man, this stranger who had the air of a visitor sent by Providence to Cosette, was at the moment the person whom Madame Thénardier hated most in the world; still, she must put a constraint on herself. This emotion was more than she could endure, accustomed to dissimulation though she was by the copy which she had to take of her husband in all his actions. She hastened to send her children to bed, and then asked the yellow man's leave to send off Cosette, "who had been very tired during the day," she added with a maternal air. Cosette went off to bed carrying Catherine in her arms. The landlady went from time to time to the other end of the room, where her husband was, in order to relieve her mind. She exchanged with him a few sentences, which were the more furious because she dared not utter them aloud.

"Old ass! what has he got in his noddle to come and disturb us in this way; to wish that little monster to play; to give her dolls,—dolls worth forty francs, to a wretch whom I would gladly sell for forty sous? A little more, and he would call her 'Your Majesty,' like the Duchesse de Berry. Can he be in his senses? The mysterious old fellow must be cracked!"

"Why so? It is very simple," Thénardier replied. "Suppose it amuses him? It amuses you that the little one should work; it amuses him to see her play. He has a right, for a traveller can do as he likes so long as he pays. If this old man is a philanthropist, how does it concern you? If he is an ass, it is no business of yours. Why do you interfere, so long as he has money?"

This was the language of a master and the reasoning of a landlord, neither of which admitted a reply.

The man was resting his elbow on the table, and had resumed his thoughtful attitude; the other travellers, pedlers, and carriers had gone away or left off singing. They regarded him from a distance with a sort of respectful fear; this poorly-clad individual, who drew hind-wheels from his pocket with such ease and lavished gigantic dolls on ragged girls, was assuredly a magnificent and formidable man. Several hours passed, midnight mass was finished, the matin bell had been rung, the drinkers had gone away, the pot-house was closed, the fire was out in the tap-room, but the stranger still remained at the same spot and in the same posture. From time to time he changed the elbow on which he was leaning, that was all; but he had not uttered a syllable since Cosette went off to bed. The Thénardiers alone remained in the room, through politeness and curiosity.

"Is he going to pass the night like that?" the landlady pouted. When it struck two, she declared herself conquered, and said to her husband, "I am off to bed; you can do as you like." The husband sat down at a table in a corner, lit a candle, and began reading the Courrier Français. A good hour passed, during which the worthy host read the paper through thrice from the date of the number to the imprint, but the stranger did not stir. Thénardier moved, coughed, spat, and made his chair creak, but the man made no movement. "Can he be asleep?" Thénardier thought. The man was not asleep, but no movement aroused him. At length the landlord doffed his cap, walked up gently, and ventured to say,—

"Do you not wish to repose, sir?"

"To sleep" would have appeared to him excessive and familiar, while "repose" hinted at luxury, and was respectful. Such words have the mysterious and admirable quality of swelling the bill on the next morning: a room in which you sleep costs twenty sous; one in which you repose costs twenty francs.

"Why, you are right," said the stranger; "where is your stable?"

"I will show you the way, sir," Thénardier replied with a smile.

He took the candle; the man fetched his stick and bundle, and Thénardier led him to a room on the first floor, which was most luxurious, with its mahogany furniture, and the bed with its red cotton curtains.

"What is this?" the traveller asked.

"Our own wedding bed-room," the landlord replied; "my wife and I occupy another, and this room is only entered three or four times a year."

"I should have preferred the stable," the man said roughly. Thénardier pretended not to hear this disagreeable reflection, but lit two new wax candles standing on the mantel-piece. A rather large fire was flashing in the grate. Upon the mantel-piece was also a woman's head-dress, made of silver tissue and orange-flowers, under a glass shade.

"And what is this?" the stranger continued.

"That, sir," Thénardier said, "is my wife's wedding bonnet."

The traveller looked at the object in a way that seemed to say,—"Then there was a moment when this monster was a virgin."

This was a falsehood of Thénardier's. When he hired the house to convert it into a public, he found this room thus furnished, and bought the lot, thinking that it would cast a graceful shadow over his "spouse," and that his house would derive from it what the English call respectability. When the traveller turned round, Thénardier had disappeared, without saying good-evening, as he did not wish to treat with disrespectful cordiality a man whom he intended to flay royally the next morning. The landlord went to his room, where his wife was in bed, but not asleep. So soon as she heard her husband's footstep, she said to him,—

"You know that I mean to turn Cosette out to-morrow?" Thénardier coldly answered,—

"How you go on!"

They exchanged no more words, and a few minutes after the candle was extinguished. For his part, the stranger had placed his stick and bundle in a corner. When the landlord had withdrawn, he sat down in an easy-chair and remained thoughtful for a time; then he took off his shoes, seized one of the candlesticks, and left the room, looking about him as if in search of something. He went along a passage and reached the staircase; here he heard a very gentle sound, like the breathing of a child. He followed this sound, and reached a triangular closet under the stairs, or, to speak more correctly, formed by the stairs themselves. Here, among old hampers and potsherds, in dust and cobwebs, there was a bed, if we may apply the term to a paillasse so rotten as to show the straw, and a blanket so torn as to show the mattress. There were no sheets, and all this lay on the ground; in this bed Cosette was sleeping. The man walked up and gazed at her. Cosette was fast asleep and had all her clothes on; in winter she did not undress, that she might be less cold. She was holding to her bosom the doll, whose large open eyes glistened in the darkness; from time to time she gave a heavy sigh, as if about to awake, and pressed the doll almost convulsively in her arms. There was nothing by her bed-side but one of her wooden shoes. Through an open door close by a large dark room could be seen, through which the stranger entered. At the end, two little white beds, belonging to Éponine and Azelma, were visible through a glass door. Behind this a wicker curtainless cradle was half hidden, in which slept the little boy who had been crying all the evening.

The stranger conjectured that this room communicated with that of the Thénardiers. He was about to return, when his eye fell on the chimney,—one of those vast inn chimneys, in which there is always so little fire when there is a frost, and which are so cold to look at. In this chimney there was no fire, not even ashes; but what there was in it attracted the travellers attention. He saw two little child's shoes of coquettish shape and unequal size; and the traveller recollected the graceful and immemorial custom of children who place their shoe in the chimney on Christmas night, in order to obtain some glittering present from their good fairy in the darkness. Éponine and Azelma had not failed in this observance. The traveller bent down; the fairy, that is, the mother, had already paid her visit, and in each shoe a handsome ten-sou piece could be seen shining. The man rose and was going away, when he observed another object in the darkest corner of the hearth; he looked at it, and recognized a hideous wooden shoe, half broken and covered with ashes and dried mud. It was Cosette's; with the touching confidence of children who may be disappointed, but are never discouraged, she had also placed her shoe in the chimney. Hope in a child that has never known aught but despair is a sublime and affecting thing. There was nothing in this shoe; but the stranger felt in his pocket and laid a louis d'or in it; then he crept noiselessly back to his bed-room.

CHAPTER IX.

THÉNARDIER AT WORK.

The next morning, almost two hours before daybreak, Thénardier was seated, pen in hand, at a table in the tap-room, and making out the bill of the yellow-coated traveller. His wife, standing behind him, was watching him; they did not exchange a syllable; on one side there was a profound meditation, on the other that profound admiration with which people watch a marvel of the human mind expanding. A noise could be heard in the house; it was the Lark sweeping the stairs. At the end of a quarter of an hour and some erasures, Thénardier produced this masterpiece,—

Service was written serviss.

"Twenty-three francs!" the wife exclaimed, with an admiration mingled with some hesitation.

Like all great artists, Thénardier was not satisfied, and said, "Pooh!" It was the accent of Castlereagh drawing up the little bill for France to pay at the Congress of Vienna.

"Monsieur Thénardier, you are right; he certainly owes it," the wife muttered, thinking of the doll given to Cosette in the presence of her children: "it is fair, but it is too much; he will not pay it."

Thénardier gave his cold laugh, and said, "He will pay it!"

This laugh was the supreme signification of certainty and authority; what was said in this way must be. The wife made no objection, but began arranging the tables, while her husband walked up and down the room; a moment after he added,—

"Why, I owe fifteen hundred francs."

He sat down in the ingle-nook, meditating with his feet in the warm ashes.

"By the bye," the wife continued, "you don't forget that I mean to bundle out Cosette to-day? The monster! she eats my heart with her doll; I would sooner marry Louis XVIII. than keep her a day longer in the house."

Thénardier lit his pipe, and said between two puffs,—"You will hand the man the bill."

Then he went out, and had scarce left the room ere the traveller entered; Thénardier at once appeared behind and stood in the half-open door, only visible to his wife. The yellow man carried his stick and bundle in his hand.

"Up so soon?" the landlady said. "Are you going to leave us already, sir?"

While speaking this, she turned the bill in her hands with an embarrassed air and made folds in it with her nails; her harsh face had an unusual look of timidity and scruple. It seemed to her difficult to present such a bill to a man who looked so thoroughly poor. The traveller seemed absent and preoccupied, as he replied,—

"Yes, Madame, I am going."

"Then you had no business to transact at Montfermeil, sir?" she continued.

"No; I am merely passing through, that is all. What do I owe you, Madame?"

The landlady, without replying, handed him the folded paper; he opened and looked at it, but his attention was visibly elsewhere.

"Do you do a good business here?" he asked.

"Tolerably well, sir," the landlady answered, stupefied at not seeing any other explosion; then she went on with an elegiac and lamentable accent,—

"Oh, sir, times are very bad! And then there are So few respectable people in these parts. It is lucky we have now and then generous and rich travellers like yourself, sir, for the expenses are so high. Why, that little girl costs us our eyes out of our head."

"What little girl?"

"Why, you know, Cosette, the Lark, as they call her hereabout."

"Oh!" said the man.

She continued,—

"What asses these peasants are with these nick-names! She looks more like a bat than a lark. You see, sir, we don't ask for charity, but we can't give it; our earnings are small and our expenses great,—the license, the door and window tax, and so on! You know, sir, that the Government claims a terrible deal of money. And then I have my own daughters, and do not care to support another person's child."

The man replied, in a voice which he strove to render careless, and in which there was a tremor,—

"And suppose you were freed of her?"

"Of whom,—of Cosette?"

The landlady's red and violent face was illumined by a hideous grin.

"Ah, sir, my good sir; take her, keep her, carry her off, sugar her, stuff her with truffles, eat her, drink her, and may all the Saints in Paradise bless you!"

"It is settled."

"You really will take her away at once?"

"At once. Call her."

"Cosette!" the landlady shouted.

"In the mean while," the man continued, "I will pay my score. How much is it?"

He took a glance at 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 his pronunciation of the two words the accent which separates the point of exclamation from the point of interrogation. Madame Thénardier had had time to prepare for the collision, and hence answered with assurance,—

"Yes, sir, twenty-three francs."

The stranger laid five five-franc pieces on the table.

"Go and fetch the girl," he said.

At this moment Thénardier walked into the middle of the room and said,—

"The gentleman owes twenty-six sous."

"Twenty-six sous!" the wife exclaimed.

"Twenty sous for the bed-room," Thénardier continued coldly, "and six for the supper. As for the girl, I must talk a little with the gentleman first. Leave us, wife."

The landlady had one of those bedazzlements which unforeseen flashes of talent produced; she felt that the great actor had come on the stage, made no answer, and went out. So soon as they were alone Thénardier offered the traveller a chair. He sat down; Thénardier remained standing, and his face assumed a singular expression of kindliness and simplicity.

"I must tell you," he said, "sir, that I adore the child."

The stranger looked at him fixedly.

"What child?"

Thénardier continued,—

"How strange it is, but you grow attached to them. What is the meaning of all that money? Put it back in your pocket; I adore the child."

"What child?" the stranger asked.

"Why, our little Cosette! Don't you wish to take her from us? Well, I speak frankly, and as true as you are an honest man, I cannot consent. I should miss the child, for I have known her since she was a baby: it is true that she costs us money, that she has her faults, that we are not rich, and that I paid more than upwards of four hundred francs for medicines alone in one of her illnesses. She has neither father nor mother, and I brought her up; and I have bread both for her and for me. Look you, I am fond of the child; affection grows on you; I am a good foolish fellow, and don't reason; I love the girl, and though my wife is quick, she loves her too. She is like our own child, and I want to hear her prattle in the house."

The stranger still looked at him fixedly, as he continued,—

"Excuse me, sir, but a child can't be given like that to the first passer-by. You will allow that I am right? I don't say that you are not rich and look like a very worthy man, and that it may be for her welfare; but I am bound to know. You understand that supposing I let her go and sacrificed myself, I should like to know where she is going, and not lose her out of sight; I should wish to know where she is, and go and see her now and then, to convince the child that her foster-father is watching over her. In short, there are some things which are not possible; I don't even know your name. I ought at least to see some scrap of paper, a passport, and so on."

The stranger, without ceasing to fix on him that look which pierces to the bottom of the conscience, said in a grave, firm voice,—

"Monsieur Thénardier, a man does not require a passport to go four leagues from Paris; and if I take Cosette away, I take her away, that is all. You will not know my name, my residence, or where she is; and it is my intention that she shall never see you again. I break the string which she has round her foot, and away she flies. Does that suit you? Yes or no!"

In the same way as demons and genii recognize, by certain signs, the presence of a superior deity, Thénardier understood that he had to do with a very strong man. It was a sort of intuition, and he comprehended with his distinct and sagacious promptitude. On the previous evening, while drinking, smoking, and singing, he had constantly looked at the stranger, watching him like a cat and studying him like a mathematician. He had both watched him on his own account, through pleasure and instinct, and played the spy on him as if paid to do so. Not a gesture or movement of the yellow-coated man escaped him, and even before the stranger so clearly manifested his interest in Cosette, Thénardier divined it. He surprised the profound glances of this old man which constantly reverted to the child. Why this interest? Who was this man? Why was his attire so wretched when his purse was so full? These questions he asked himself and could not answer, and they irritated him; he reflected on them the whole night. He could not be Cosette's father. Was he her grandfather? Then, why did he not make himself known at once? When a man has a claim, he proves it, and this man evidently had no claim on Cosette. In that case, what was it? Thénardier lost himself in suppositions; he caught a gleam of everything and saw nothing. However this might be, on beginning the conversation, feeling sure that there was a secret in all this, and that the man was interested in remaining in the shadow, he felt himself strong; but on hearing the stranger's firm and distinct answer, when he saw that this mysterious person was simply mysterious, he felt himself weak. He had not expected anything of this sort, and it routed his conjectures. He rallied his ideas, and weighed all this in a second. Thénardier was one of those men who judge of a situation at a glance, and considered that it was the moment to advance straight and rapidly. He behaved like great captains at that decisive instant which they alone can recognize, and suddenly unmasked his battery.

"Sir," he said, "I want one thousand five hundred francs."

The stranger drew from his side-pocket an old black leathern portfolio, and took from it three bank-notes which he laid on the table; then he placed his large thumb on the notes, and said to the landlord,—

"Bring Cosette here."

While this was taking place, what was Cosette about? On waking, she ran to her sabot and found the gold coin in it; it was not a napoleon, but one of those new twenty-franc pieces of the Restoration, on which the Prussian queue was substituted for the crown of laurels. Cosette was dazzled, and her destiny was beginning to intoxicate her; she knew not what a gold piece was, she had never seen one, and she hurriedly hid it in her pocket, as if she had stolen it. She felt it was really hers; she guessed whence the gift came, but she experienced a feeling of joy full of fear. She was happy, but she was more stupefied; these magnificent things did not seem to her real,—the doll frightened her, the gold coin frightened her, and she trembled vaguely at this magnificence. The stranger alone did not frighten her; on the contrary, he reassured her since the previous evening. Through her amazement and her sleep, she thought in her little childish mind of this man, who looked so old and poor and sad, and who was so rich and good. Ever since she met him in the wood all had changed for her, as it were. Cosette, less happy than the meanest swallow, had never yet known what it is to take refuge in the shadow and beneath the wing of her mother; for five years, that is to say, so far back as her thoughts went, the poor child had trembled and shuddered. She had always been exposed in her nudity to the bleak blast of misfortune, and she felt as if she were clothed; formerly her soul was cold, now it was warm. Cosette no longer felt afraid of her mistress, for she was no longer alone; she had some one by her side. She had set about her daily work very quickly, and the louis, which she had in the same pocket from which the fifteen-sous piece fell on the previous night, caused her thoughts to stray. She did not dare touch it, but she looked at it for five minutes at a time. While sweeping the stairs, she stood motionless, forgetting her broom and the whole world, engaged in watching this star sparkle in her pocket. It was during one of these contemplations that her mistress came to her; by her husband's order she had come to fetch the child, and, extraordinary to say, did not strike her, or even abuse her.

"Cosette," she said almost gently, "come directly."

A moment after, Cosette entered the tap-room. The stranger took his bundle and untied it; it contained a complete mourning dress for a child of seven years of age.

"My dear," the man said, "take these and go and dress yourself quickly."

Day was breaking, when those inhabitants of Montfermeil who were beginning to open their doors saw a poorly-clad man and a girl, holding a large doll, going along the Paris road toward Livry. It was our man and Cosette. No one knew the man, and few recognized Cosette in her new dress. Cosette was going away. With whom, she was ignorant. Where to, she did not know. All she understood was that she was leaving Thénardier's pot-house behind her; no one thought of saying good-by to her, or she to any one. She left the house, hated and hating. Poor gentle being, whose heart up to this hour had only been compressed!

Cosette walked gravely, opening her large eyes and looking at the sky; she had placed her louis in the pocket of her new apron, and from time to time stooped down and looked at it, and then at her companion.

CHAPTER X.

THÉNARDIER HAS ONE REGRET.

Madame Thénardier, according to her habit, had left her husband to act, and anticipated grand results. When the man and Cosette had left, Thénardier let a good quarter of an hour elapse, then took her on one side and showed her the fifteen hundred francs.

"Is that all?" she said.

It was the first time since her marriage that she ventured to criticise an act of her master. The blow went home.

"You are right," he said; "I am an imbecile! Give me my hat." He thrust the three notes into his pocket and went out; but he made a mistake and first turned to the right. Some neighbors of whom he inquired put him on the right track, and he walked along at a great rate, and soliloquizing.

"The man is evidently a millionnaire dressed in yellow, and I am a blockhead. He gave first twenty sous, then five francs, then fifty francs, then fifteen hundred francs, and all with the same facility. He would have given fifteen thousand francs! But I shall overtake him." And then, the bundle of clothes prepared beforehand was singular, and there was a mystery behind it. Now mysteries must not be let go when you hold them, for the secrets of the rich are sponges full of gold, if you know how to squeeze them. All these thoughts whirled about his brain. "I am an ass!" he said. On leaving Montfermeil and reaching the angle formed by the Livry road, you can see it running for a long distance before you upon the plateau. On getting to this point he calculated that he should see the man and child, and looked as far as he could, but saw nothing. He inquired again, and passers-by told him that the man and the child he was looking for had gone in the direction of Gagny wood. He followed them; for, though they had the start of him, a child walks slowly. He went fast, and then, again, the country was familiar to him. All at once he stopped and smote his forehead, like a man who has forgotten the essential thing and is ready to retrace his steps.

"I ought to have brought my gun," he said to himself. Thénardier was one of those double natures, that pass at times among us without our knowledge, and disappear unknown, because destiny has only shown us one side of them: it is the fate of many men to live thus half submerged. In an ordinary situation Thénardier had everything necessary to make him—we do not say to be—what is conventionally termed an honest tradesman or a worthy citizen. At the same time, certain circumstances being given, certain shocks stirring up his nature from the bottom, he had everything required to make him a villain. He was a shop-keeper in whom there was a monster. Satan must at times crouch in a corner of the lair in which Thénardier lived, and dream before this hideous masterpiece. After a moment's hesitation he thought,—

"Nonsense! they would have time to escape."

And he continued his walk, going rapidly ahead and almost with an air of certainty, displaying the sagacity of a fox scenting a flock of partridges. In fact, when he had passed the ponds and cut across the wide turfed glade which covers the old water-way of the Abbey de Chelles, he noticed under a shrub a hat, on which he built many conjectures. The shrub was low, and Thénardier saw that the man and Cosette were sitting under it. The child could not be seen, but the doll's head was visible. Thénardier was not mistaken; the man had sat down there to let the child rest a little, and the tavern-keeper dodged round the shrub and suddenly appeared before those whom he was seeking.

"Excuse me, sir," he said, panting, "but here are your fifteen hundred francs."

The man raised his eyes.

"What is the meaning of this?"

Thénardier answered respectfully,—

"It means, sir, that I am going to take Cosette back!"

The child started, and clung to the man. The latter answered, looking fixedly at Thénardier and leaving a space between each word,—

"You—take—Cosette—back?"

"Yes, sir, I do: and I must tell you that I have reflected. The truth is, that I have no right to give her to you. Look you, I am an honest man: the little one does not belong to me, but to her mother, who intrusted her to me, and I can only give her back to her mother. You will say to me, 'Her mother is dead.' Good. In that case, I can only surrender Cosette to a person who brings me a written authority from her mother. That is clear enough."

The man, without answering, felt in his pocket, and Thénardier saw the portfolio with the bank-notes reappear. He gave a start of joy.

"Good," he thought; "I have him, he is going to bribe me."

Before opening the portfolio the traveller looked around him; the place was utterly deserted, and there was not a soul in the wood or the valley. The man opened the pocket-book and took out, not the handful of bank-notes which Thénardier anticipated, but a simple sheet of paper, which he opened and handed to the landlord, saying,—

"You are right: read."

Thénardier took the paper and read:—

"M. sur M., March 25, 1823.
"MONSIEUR THÉNARDIER,—You will hand over Cosette to the bearer, who will pay up all little matters.

Yours respectfully,
FANTINE."

"Do you know the signature?" the man continued.

It was really Fantine's, and Thénardier recognized it, and had no reply. He felt a double annoyance—first, at having to renounce the bribery which he expected; and secondly, that of being beaten. The man added,—

"You can keep that paper as your discharge."

Thénardier folded it up neatly, and growled,—

"The signature is tolerably well imitated. Well, be it so."

Then he attempted a desperate effort.

"So far, so good, sir, since you are the bearer; but the expenses must be paid, and there is a heavy sum owing me."

The man rose, and said, as he dusted his threadbare cuff, "Monsieur Thénardier, in January the mother calculated that she owed you 120 francs; in February you sent in an account of 500 francs; you received 300 at the end of that month, and 300 more early in March. Since then nine months have elapsed at the agreed-on price of fifteen francs, which makes 135 francs. You had received 100 francs too much, so this leaves 35 francs owing you, and I have just given you 1500."

Thénardier felt just like the wolf when it is caught by the leg in a steel trap.

"Who in the fiend's name is this man?" he thought.

He behaved like the wolf: he shook himself: impudence had carried him through before now.

"Monsieur, I don't know your name," he said boldly, and, putting off his respectful manner, "if you do not give me 3000 francs I shall take Cosette back."

The stranger said quietly, "Come, Cosette." He took the child by his left hand, and with the right picked up his stick. Thénardier noticed the hugeness of the stick and the solitude of the spot; the man buried himself in the wood, leaving the landlord motionless and confounded. As he walked away Thénardier regarded his broad shoulders and enormous fists, then his eye fell on his own thin arms. "I must have been a fool," he said, "not to bring my gun, as I was going to the chase."

Still the tavern-keeper did not give in. "I will know where he goes," he said, and began following them at a distance. Two things remained in his hands,—irony in the shape of the scrap of paper signed "Fantine," and a consolation in the 1500 francs. The man led Cosette in the direction of Bondy; he walked slowly, with drooping head and in a pensive attitude. Winter had rendered the wood transparent, and hence Thénardier did not lose sight of them, while keeping some distance off. From time to time the man turned round and looked to see whether he were followed, and suddenly perceived Thénardier. He drew Cosette into a clump of trees, in which they both disappeared. "Confusion!" said Thénardier, as he doubled his pace. The closeness of the trees compelled him to draw nearer to them, and when the man was at the thickest part he turned round and saw Thénardier, although the latter tried to conceal himself in the branches. The man gave him a restless glance, then tossed his head and continued his walk. Thénardier followed him; but after going some two hundred yards the man turned and looked at him so menacingly that the landlord thought it "useless" to go any farther, and turned back.

XI.

NO. 9430 REAPPEARS, AND COSETTE WINS IT IN THE LOTTERY.

Jean Valjean was not dead.

When he fell into the sea, or rather when he threw himself into it, he was, as we have seen, without irons. He swam in the trough of the sea alongside a vessel at anchor, to which a skiff was made fast. He managed to conceal himself in this skiff until evening. When night came he entered the water again and reached the shore at a short distance from Cape Brun. There, as he had no lack of money, he was able to provide himself with clothes. An inn in the suburbs of Balaguier was then the dressing-room of escaped convicts,—a profitable line of business. Then, Jean Valjean, like all these unhappy runaways who try to guard against the law and chance meetings, followed a track both obscure and winding. He found his first shelter at Pradeux near Beausset. From there he journeyed toward Grand-Villard, near Briançon, in the Upper Alps,—a groping and restless flight, a mole-track with unknown branches. Later, some trace of his passage could be found at l'Ain, in the district of Civrieux, in the Pyrenees at Accons, at a place called Grange-de-Doumecq, near the hamlet of Chavailles and in the suburbs of Périgueux, at Brienne, in the Canton of Chapelle-Gonaguet. He reached Paris. We have just seen him at Montfermeil.

His first care, on reaching Paris, had been to buy mourning robes for a little girl of seven or eight years, then to find a lodging-place. That done, he made his appearance at Montfermeil.

It will be remembered that once before at the time of his former escape he had made there a mysterious journey of which justice had had some information.

However, he was thought to be dead, and this thickened the obscurity which surrounded him. While in Paris there fell into his hands a journal which recorded the fact. He felt reassured, and almost as much at peace as if he really were dead.

On the very evening of the day on which Jean Valjean saved Cosette from the clutches of Thénardier he came back to Paris. He re-entered the city at nightfall with the child, through the Barrière Monceaux. There he jumped into a cab which brought him to the esplanade of the Observatory. Here he got out, paid the driver, took Cosette by the hand, and they both took their course in the dark night through the deserted streets near the Oursine and the Glacière toward the Boulevard de l'Hôpital.

The day had been strange and full of emotions for Cosette. They had dined behind hedges on bread and cheese bought at unfrequented cook-shops; they had frequently changed carriages, and made part of the journey on foot. She did not complain, but she was tired, and Jean Valjean felt it by his hand, on which she hung more and more as she walked. He took her on his back; Cosette, without letting go of Catherine, laid her head on his shoulder and fell asleep.

BOOK IV.

THE GORBEAU TENEMENT.

I.

MASTER GORBEAU.

Forty years ago the solitary walker who ventured into the lost districts of the Salpêtrière, and went up the boulevard as far as the Barrière d'Italie, reached a quarter where it might be said that Paris disappeared. It was not solitude, for there were passers-by; it was not the country, for there were houses and streets; it was not a town, for the streets had ruts as large as those in the high-roads, and grass grew in them; and it was not a village, for the houses were too lofty. What was it then? It was an inhabited place where there was nobody, a deserted spot where there was somebody; it was a boulevard of the great city, a street of Paris, more ferocious at night than a forest, more gloomy by day than a cemetery. It was the old quarter of the Marché-aux-Chevaux. The rambler, if he risked himself beyond the tottering walls of the market, if he even consented to pass the Rue du Petit-Banquier, reached the corner of the Rue des Vignes St. Marcel, a but little known latitude, after leaving on his right a garden protected by high walls; next a field in which stood tan-mills resembling gigantic beaver-dams; next an enclosure encumbered with planks, tree-stumps, sawdust, and chips, on the top of which a large dog barked; then a long low wall, all in ruins, with a small, decrepit back gate, covered with moss, which burst into flower in spring; and lastly, in the most desolate spot, a hideous and decrepit building, on which could be read in large letters, "Stick no Bills." Here, close to a foundry, and between two garden walls, could be seen, at the time of which we write, a poor house, which, at the first glance, seemed small as a cottage, but was in reality large as a cathedral. It turned its gable end to the public thoroughfare, and hence came its apparent smallness; nearly the whole house was concealed, and only a door and a window could be perceived.

This house was only one story high. On examining it, the first fact that struck you was that the door could never have been other than that of a low lodging-house, while the window, had it been carved in stone instead of made of stucco, might have belonged to a mansion. The door was nothing but a collection of worm-eaten planks, clumsily held together by roughly-planed cross-beams. It opened immediately on a steep staircase, muddy, dirty, and dusty, of the same width as itself, which could be seen from the street mounting steep as a ladder, and disappearing in the gloom between two walls. The top of the clumsy opening in which the door stood was masked by a thin deal plank, in which a triangular hole had been cut. On the inside of the door a brush dipped in ink had clumsily traced No. 52, while over the skylight the same brush had painted No. 50; so people hesitated. Dust-colored rags hung like a drapery over the triangular skylight. The window was wide, tolerably lofty, filled with large panes of glass, and protected by Venetian shutters; but these panes had various wounds, at once concealed and betrayed by an ingenious bandage of paper, and the Venetian shutters, broken and hanging from their hinges, threatened passers-by more than they protected the inhabitants. The horizontal screen-boards were wanting here and there, and these places had been filled up with boards nailed on perpendicularly; so that the affair began by being a Venetian screen, and ended by being a shutter. This door, which had an unclean look, and this window, which looked honest, though fallen in the world, produced the effect of two beggars walking side by side with two different faces under the same rags, the one having always been a mendicant, while the other had once been a gentleman. The staircase led to a very large building, which resembled a shed which had been converted into a house. This building had, as its intestinal tube, a long passage, upon which opened, right and left, compartments of various dimensions, habitable at a pinch, and more like booths than cells. These rooms looked out on the dreary landscape around. The whole was dark, wearisome, dull, melancholy, and sepulchral, and traversed, according as the cracks were in the roof or the door, by cold sunbeams or sharp draughts. An interesting and picturesque peculiarity of houses of this description is the enormous size of the cobwebs. To the left of the door, on the boulevard, and at about six feet from the ground, a bricked-up window formed a square hole filled by passing lads with stones. A portion of this building has been recently demolished, but what still remains will allow an idea to be formed of what it was. The whole affair is not more than a century old; one hundred years are the youth of a church and the old age of a human abode. It seems as if the house of man shares his brief tenure, and the House of God His eternity. The postman called this house No. 50-52, but it was known in the quarter by the name of Maison Gorbeau. Let us state whence this title came.

The collectors of things not generally known, who make anecdotal herbals, and prick fugacious dates into their memory with a pin, know that there were in Paris, about the year 1770, two advocates at the Châtelet of the names of Corbeau and Renard,—two names foreseen by Lafontaine. The opportunity was too good to be neglected, and ere long the following parody, in rather halting verse, was in everybody's mouth:—

"Maître Corbeau, sur un dossier perché,
Tenait dans son bec une saisie exécutoire;
Maître Renard, par l'odeur alléché,
Lui fit à peu près cette histoire:
Eh, bonjour," etc.

The two honest lawyers, who were unable to hold their heads up under the outbursts of laughter that followed them, resolved to get rid of their names, and for that purpose appealed to the king. The petition was handed to Louis XV. on the very day when the Papal Nuncio kneeling on one side, and Cardinal de la Roche Aymon on the other, were drawing the slippers on to the bare feet of Madame du Barry, who had just left her couch. The king, who was laughing, continued to laugh, gayly passed from the two bishops to the two lawyers, and forgave them their names, or nearly so. By royal authority Master Corbeau was allowed to add a tail to his initial letter and become Gorbeau; but Master Renard was less fortunate,—he could only obtain leave to place a P before his R, and call himself Prenard, so that the second name was nearly as significant as the first. Now, according to local tradition, Master Gorbeau had been owner of the building numbered 50-52, on the Boulevard de l'Hôpital, and was even author of the grand window. From this has this tumble-down place the name of Maison Gorbeau. Opposite the house there stands, amid the boulevard trees, an elm which is nearly three parts dead; a little farther on is the Rue de la Barrière des Gobelins,—a street at that time without houses, unpaved, planted with badly-growing trees, and which ran straight down to the city walls. A copperas smell issues in puffs from the roof of an adjacent manufactory. The barrier was close by, and in 1823 the city walls were still in existence. The barrier itself cast a gloom over the mind, for it was on the road to Bicêtre. Under the Empire and the Restoration men condemned to death returned to Paris through it on the day of their execution. Here was committed, about the year 1829, that mysterious assassination called "the murder of the Barrière de Fontainebleau,"—a frightful problem which has never been elucidated, a mournful enigma which has never been solved. A few steps farther on you come to the fatal Rue Croulebarbe, in which Ulbach stabbed the woman who looked after the Ivry goats, to the sound of thunder, as in a melodrama. A few more steps and you reach the abominable pollard-elms of the Barrière St. Jacques, that philanthropic expedient concealing the scaffold, the paltry, disgraceful Place de Grève of a shop-keeping society, which has recoiled before the penalty of death, though not daring to abolish it with grandeur or keep it up with authority. Thirty-seven years ago, and leaving aside this place St. Jacques, which was, as it were, predestined, and has always been horrible, the gloomiest point perhaps of all this gloomy boulevard was that where No. 50-52 stood. Tradespeople did not begin to brood there till five-and-twenty years later. The place was morose, for you felt yourself between La Salpêtrière, whose dome was just visible, and Bicêtre, whose barrier you could touch; that is to say, between male and female mania. As far as the eye could reach, nothing was visible save the slaughter-houses, the city wall, and a few rare frontages of foundries, resembling barracks or monasteries. Everywhere were sheds and rubbish, old walls black as coffins, new walls white as winding-sheets; everywhere parallel rows of trees, buildings standing in rows, long odd lines, and the gloomy sadness of right angles. There was not a diversity of the soil, not a single architectural whim; the ensemble was freezing, regular, and hideous. Nothing makes the heart so heavy as symmetry, because symmetry is ennui, and ennui is the basis of mourning, a yawning despair. It is possible to imagine something more horrible than an Inferno in which people suffer; it is one in which they are ennuyés. If such an Inferno existed, this section of the Boulevard de l'Hôpital might be its avenue.

At nightfall, at the moment when light disappears, and before all in winter, at the hour when the evening breeze is tearing from the elms their last rusty leaves, when the darkness is profound and starless, and when the moon and the wind make rents in the clouds, this boulevard became really terrifying. The black outlines were lost in the gloom, and the passer-by could not refrain from thinking of the countless gallows traditions of the spot. This solitude, in which so many crimes had been committed, had something awful about it; traps could almost be foreseen in the darkness, all the confused shapes of the darkness appeared suspicious, and the long, hollow squares noticed between the trees seemed graves. By day it was ugly, in the evening lugubrious, and at night sinister. In the summer twilight a few old women might be seen sitting under the elms upon raw, rotted benches; these worthy old ladies had a partiality for begging. Even at the time of which we write, however, this quarter, which looked more superannuated than ancient, was striving to transform itself, and any one who wished to see it was obliged to make haste, for each day some detail disappeared from the ensemble. For the last twenty years the Orleans railway station has been by the side of the old faubourg, and has worked it up; for wherever a station is built on the skirt of a capital it is the death of a suburb and the birth of a town. Round these centres of popular movement, at the rolling of these mighty machines, under the breath of these monstrous horses of civilization which devour coal and snort fire, the earth trembles, and opens to swallow up the old abodes of men and bring forth new ones; the old houses crumble away, and new ones rise in their place.

From the day when the Orleans railway station invaded the territory of the Salpêtrière, the old narrow streets that border the Jardin des Plantes have been shaken down, traversed as they are three or four times a day by those currents of diligences, hackney coaches, and omnibuses, which, within a given time, drive back the houses on both sides: for it is a curious though perfectly true fact that, just as in large capitals the sun makes the fronts of houses grow and expand to the south, the frequent passing of vehicles widens streets. The symptoms of a new life are visible in the remotest corners of this old provincial district; pavement is being laid down and is beginning to extend to spots where there are as yet no wayfarers. One memorable morning in July, 1845, the bitumen caldrons were suddenly seen smoking there, and on that day it may be said that civilization reached the Rue de l'Oursine, and that Paris entered the Faubourg St. Marceau.

CHAPTER II.

THE NEST OF AN OWL AND A LINNET.

Jean Valjean stopped before No. 50-52. Like the dull bird, he had selected this deserted spot in which to build his nest. He felt in his pocket, took out a latch-key, opened and carefully shut the door again, and went upstairs, still carrying Cosette on his back. When he reached the landing he took from his pocket a key, with which he opened another door. The room he entered was a sort of spacious garret, furnished with a mattress laid on the ground, a table, and a few chairs. There was a burning stove in the corner, and the boulevard lamp faintly illumined this poor interior. At the end of the room was a closet with a poor bedstead, to which Jean Valjean carried the child and laid her on it, without awaking her. He struck a light and lit a candle,—all this had been prepared on the previous day,—and he then began gazing at Cosette with a look full of ecstasy, in which the expression of kindness and tenderness almost attained delirium. The little girl, with that calm confidence which only appertains to extreme strength and extreme weakness, had fallen asleep without knowing with whom she was, and continued to sleep without knowing where she was. Jean Valjean bent down and kissed the child's hand. Nine months previously he had kissed her mother's hand, who bad also just fallen asleep, and the same painful, religious, poignant feeling filled his heart. He knelt down by the side of Cosette's bed.

Long after daybreak the child was still asleep. A pale beam of the December sun filtered through the window and made large strips of light and shadow on the ceiling. Suddenly a heavily-laden wagon, passing along the boulevard, shook the house like a blast of wind and made it tremble from top to bottom.

"Yes, Madame," Cosette cried, waking with a start, "I am coming directly."

And she jumped out of bed, her eyelids still half closed by the weight of sleep, and stretched out her arms to a corner of the wall.

"Oh, goodness, my broom!" she said.

She opened her eyes thoroughly, and saw Jean Valjean's smiling face.

"Ah, it is true," the child said. "Good-morning, sir.

Children accept at once and familiarly joy and happiness, for they are themselves by nature happiness and joy. Cosette saw Catherine at the foot of her bed, caught her up, and while playing, asked Jean Valjean a hundred questions,—"Where was she? Was Paris large? Was Madame Thénardier a long way off, and would she never return?" etc. etc. etc. All at once she exclaimed, "How pretty it is here!"

It was a frightful hole, but she felt herself free.

"Must I sweep?" she at length continued.

"Play," said Jean Valjean.

The day passed in this way; and Cosette, not feeling any anxiety at understanding nothing, was inexpressibly happy between her doll and this good man.

CHAPTER III.

TWO EVILS MAKE A GOOD.

The next morning at daybreak Jean Valjean was again standing by Cosette's bedside; he was motionless and waiting for her to awake: something new was entering his soul. Jean Valjean had never loved anything. For twenty-five years he had been alone in the world, and had never been father, lover, husband, or friend. At the galleys he was wicked, gloomy, chaste, ignorant, and ferocious,—the heart of the old convict was full of virginities. His sister and his sister's children had only left in him a vague and distant reminiscence, which in the end entirely faded away: he had made every effort to find them again, and, not being able to do so, forgot them,—human nature is thus constituted. The other tender emotions of his youth, if he had any, had fallen into an abyss. When he saw Cosette, when he carried her off, he felt his heart stirred: all the passion and affection there was in him was aroused and rushed toward this child. He went up to the bed on which she slept, and he trembled with joy: he felt pangs like a mother, and knew not what it was; for the great and strange emotion of a heart which is preparing to love is a very obscure and sweet thing. Poor old heart still young! But as he was fifty-five years of age and Cosette eight, all the love he might have felt during life was melted into a species of ineffable glow. This was the second white apparition he met: the Bishop had caused the dawn of virtue to rise on his horizon, and Cosette now produced that of love.

The first days passed in this bedazzlement. On her side Cosette became unconsciously different, poor little creature! She was so little when her mother left her that she did not remember; and like all children, who resemble the young vine-twigs that cling to everything, she tried to love, and had not succeeded. All had repulsed her,—the Thénardiers, their children, and other children; she had loved the dog which died, and after that nothing and nobody would have anything to do with her. It is a sad thing to say, but at the age of eight she had a cold heart. It was not her fault, it was not that she lacked the faculty of loving; but it was, alas! the possibility. Hence, from the first day, all that felt and thought within her began to love the good man; and she experienced what she had never known before,—a feeling of expansion. The man no longer even produced the effect upon her of being old or poor; she found Jean Valjean handsome, in the same way as she found the garret pretty. Such are the effects of dawn, childhood, youth, and joy. The novelty of earth and life have something to do in it, and nothing is so charming as the coloring reflection of happiness upon an attic; in this way we have all a blue garret in our past. Nature had placed a profound interval, of fifty years, between Jean Valjean and Cosette; but destiny filled up this separation. Destiny suddenly united, and affianced with its irresistible power, these two uprooted existences so different in age, so similar in sorrow; and the one, in fact, was the complement of the other. Cosette's instinct sought a father, in the same way as Jean Valjean's sought a child, and to meet was to find each other. At the mysterious moment when their two hands clasped they were welded together; and when their two souls saw each other they recognized that each was necessary to the other, and joined in a close embrace. Taking the words in their most comprehensive and absolute meaning, we may say that, separated from everything by the walls of the tombs, Jean Valjean was the widower as Cosette was the orphan, and this situation caused Jean Valjean to become in a celestial manner Cosette's father. And, in truth, the mysterious impression produced upon Cosette in the Chelles wood by Jean Valjean's hand grasping hers in the darkness was not an illusion but a reality.