الفصل الفصل 102 · 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:—

“Good gracious, yes, sir, it is twenty-three francs.”

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

“Go and get the child,” said he.

At that moment Thénardier advanced to the middle of the room, and

said:—

“Monsieur owes twenty-six sous.”

“Twenty-six sous!” exclaimed his wife.

“Twenty sous for the chamber,” resumed Thénardier, coldly, “and six

sous for his supper. As for the child, I must discuss that matter a

little with the gentleman. Leave us, wife.”

Madame Thénardier was dazzled as with the shock caused by unexpected

lightning flashes of talent. She was conscious that a great actor was

making his entrance on the stage, uttered not a word in reply, and left

the room.

As soon as they were alone, Thénardier offered the traveller a chair.

The traveller seated himself; Thénardier remained standing, and his

face assumed a singular expression of good-fellowship and simplicity.

“Sir,” said he, “what I have to say to you is this, that I adore that

child.”

The stranger gazed intently at him.

“What child?”

Thénardier continued:—

“How strange it is, one grows attached. What money is that? Take back

your hundred-sou piece. I adore the child.”

“Whom do you mean?” demanded the stranger.

“Eh! our little Cosette! Are you not intending to take her away from

us? Well, I speak frankly; as true as you are an honest man, I will not

consent to it. I shall miss that child. I saw her first when she was a

tiny thing. It is true that she costs us money; it is true that she has

her faults; it is true that we are not rich; it is true that I have

paid out over four hundred francs for drugs for just one of her

illnesses! But one must do something for the good God’s sake. She has

neither father nor mother. I have brought her up. I have bread enough

for her and for myself. In truth, I think a great deal of that child.

You understand, one conceives an affection for a person; I am a good

sort of a beast, I am; I do not reason; I love that little girl; my

wife is quick-tempered, but she loves her also. You see, she is just

the same as our own child. I want to keep her to babble about the

house.”

The stranger kept his eye intently fixed on Thénardier. The latter

continued:—

“Excuse me, sir, but one does not give away one’s child to a passer-by,

like that. I am right, am I not? Still, I don’t say—you are rich; you

have the air of a very good man,—if it were for her happiness. But one

must find out that. You understand: suppose that I were to let her go

and to sacrifice myself, I should like to know what becomes of her; I

should not wish to lose sight of her; I should like to know with whom

she is living, so that I could go to see her from time to time; so that

she may know that her good foster-father is alive, that he is watching

over her. In short, there are things which are not possible. I do not

even know your name. If you were to take her away, I should say: ‘Well,

and the Lark, what has become of her?’ One must, at least, see some

petty scrap of paper, some trifle in the way of a passport, you know!”

The stranger, still surveying him with that gaze which penetrates, as

the saying goes, to the very depths of the conscience, replied in a

grave, firm voice:—

“Monsieur Thénardier, one does not require a passport to travel five

leagues from Paris. If I take Cosette away, I shall take her away, and

that is the end of the matter. You will not know my name, you will not

know my residence, you will not know where she is; and my intention is

that she shall never set eyes on you again so long as she lives. I

break the thread which binds her foot, and she departs. Does that suit

you? Yes or no?”

Since geniuses, like demons, recognize the presence of a superior God

by certain signs, Thénardier comprehended that he had to deal with a

very strong person. It was like an intuition; he comprehended it with

his clear and sagacious promptitude. While drinking with the carters,

smoking, and singing coarse songs on the preceding evening, he had

devoted the whole of the time to observing the stranger, watching him

like a cat, and studying him like a mathematician. He had watched him,

both on his own account, for the pleasure of the thing, and through

instinct, and had spied upon him as though he had been paid for so

doing. Not a movement, not a gesture, on the part of the man in the

yellow great-coat had escaped him. Even before the stranger had so

clearly manifested his interest in Cosette, Thénardier had divined his

purpose. He had caught the old man’s deep glances returning constantly

to the child. Who was this man? Why this interest? Why this hideous

costume, when he had so much money in his purse? Questions which he put

to himself without being able to solve them, and which irritated him.

He had pondered it all night long. He could not be Cosette’s father.

Was he her grandfather? Then why not make himself known at once? When

one has a right, one asserts it. This man evidently had no right over

Cosette. What was it, then? Thénardier lost himself in conjectures. He

caught glimpses of everything, but he saw nothing. Be that as it may,

on entering into conversation with the man, sure that there was some

secret in the case, that the latter had some interest in remaining in

the shadow, he felt himself strong; when he perceived from the

stranger’s clear and firm retort, that this mysterious personage was

mysterious in so simple a way, he became conscious that he was weak. He

had expected nothing of the sort. His conjectures were put to the rout.

He rallied his ideas. He weighed everything in the space of a second.

Thénardier was one of those men who take in a situation at a glance. He

decided that the moment had arrived for proceeding straightforward, and

quickly at that. He did as great leaders do at the decisive moment,

which they know that they alone recognize; he abruptly unmasked his

batteries.

“Sir,” said he, “I am in need of fifteen hundred francs.”

The stranger took from his side pocket an old pocketbook of black

leather, opened it, drew out three bank-bills, which he laid on the

table. Then he placed his large thumb on the notes and said to the

inn-keeper:—

“Go and fetch Cosette.”

While this was taking place, what had Cosette been doing?

On waking up, Cosette had run to get her shoe. In it she had found the

gold piece. It was not a Napoleon; it was one of those perfectly new

twenty-franc pieces of the Restoration, on whose effigy the little

Prussian queue had replaced the laurel wreath. Cosette was dazzled. Her

destiny began to intoxicate her. She did not know what a gold piece

was; she had never seen one; she hid it quickly in her pocket, as

though she had stolen it. Still, she felt that it really was hers; she

guessed whence her gift had come, but the joy which she experienced was

full of fear. She was happy; above all she was stupefied. Such

magnificent and beautiful things did not appear real. The doll

frightened her, the gold piece frightened her. She trembled vaguely in

the presence of this magnificence. The stranger alone did not frighten

her. On the contrary, he reassured her. Ever since the preceding

evening, amid all her amazement, even in her sleep, she had been

thinking in her little childish mind of that man who seemed to be so

poor and so sad, and who was so rich and so kind. Everything had

changed for her since she had met that good man in the forest. Cosette,

less happy than the most insignificant swallow of heaven, had never

known what it was to take refuge under a mother’s shadow and under a

wing. For the last five years, that is to say, as far back as her

memory ran, the poor child had shivered and trembled. She had always

been exposed completely naked to the sharp wind of adversity; now it

seemed to her she was clothed. Formerly her soul had seemed cold, now

it was warm. Cosette was no longer afraid of the Thénardier. She was no

longer alone; there was some one there.

She hastily set about her regular morning duties. That louis, which she

had about her, in the very apron pocket whence the fifteen-sou piece

had fallen on the night before, distracted her thoughts. She dared not

touch it, but she spent five minutes in gazing at it, with her tongue

hanging out, if the truth must be told. As she swept the staircase, she

paused, remained standing there motionless, forgetful of her broom and

of the entire universe, occupied in gazing at that star which was

blazing at the bottom of her pocket.

It was during one of these periods of contemplation that the Thénardier

joined her. She had gone in search of Cosette at her husband’s orders.

What was quite unprecedented, she neither struck her nor said an

insulting word to her.

“Cosette,” she said, almost gently, “come immediately.”

An instant later Cosette entered the public room.

The stranger took up the bundle which he had brought and untied it.

This bundle contained a little woollen gown, an apron, a fustian

bodice, a kerchief, a petticoat, woollen stockings, shoes—a complete

outfit for a girl of seven years. All was black.

“My child,” said the man, “take these, and go and dress yourself

quickly.”

Daylight was appearing when those of the inhabitants of Montfermeil who

had begun to open their doors beheld a poorly clad old man leading a

little girl dressed in mourning, and carrying a pink doll in her arms,

pass along the road to Paris. They were going in the direction of

Livry.

It was our man and Cosette.

No one knew the man; as Cosette was no longer in rags, many did not

recognize her. Cosette was going away. With whom? She did not know.

Whither? She knew not. All that she understood was that she was leaving

the Thénardier tavern behind her. No one had thought of bidding her

farewell, nor had she thought of taking leave of any one. She was

leaving that hated and hating house.

Poor, gentle creature, whose heart had been repressed up to that hour!

Cosette walked along gravely, with her large eyes wide open, and gazing

at the sky. She had put her louis in the pocket of her new apron. From

time to time, she bent down and glanced at it; then she looked at the

good man. She felt something as though she were beside the good God.