Essential Novelists - Victor Hugo. Victor Hugo

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 Maneuvres

      ––––––––

      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