Les miserables (Abridged) - Victor Hugo [153]
“Ah! my brave man, I am very sorry, but I have no room.”
“Put me where you will,” said the man, “in the garret, in the stable. I will pay as if I had a room.”
“Forty sous.”
“Forty sous. Very well.”
“In advance.”
“Forty sous,” whispered a waggoner to the Thénardiess, “but it is only twenty sous.”
“It is forty sous for him,” replied the Thénardiess in the same tone. “I don’t lodge poor people for less.”
“That is true,” added her husband softly, “it ruins a house to have this sort of people.”
Meanwhile the man, after leaving his stick and bundle on a bench, had seated himself at a table on which Cosette had been quick to place a bottle of wine and a glass. The pedlar, who had asked for the bucket of water, had gone himself to carry it to his horse. Cosette had resumed her place under the kitchen table and her knitting.
The man, who hardly touched his lips to the wine he had poured for himself, was contemplating the child with a strange attentiveness.
Cosette was ugly. Happy, she might, perhaps, have been pretty. We have already sketched this little pitiful face. Cosette was thin and pale; she was nearly eight years old, but one would hardly have thought her six. Her large eyes, sunk in a sort of shadow, were almost completely dulled by continual weeping. The corners of her mouth had that curve of habitual anguish, which is seen in the condemned and in the hopelessly sick. Her hands were, as her mother had guessed, “covered with chilblains.” The light of the fire which was shining upon her, made her bones stand out and rendered her thinness fearfully visible. As she was always shivering, she had acquired the habit of drawing her knees together. Her whole dress was nothing but a rag, which would have excited pity in the summer, and which excited horror in the winter. She had on nothing but cotton, and that full of holes; not a rag of woollen. Her skin showed here and there, and black and blue spots could be distinguished, which indicated the places where the Thénardiess had touched her. Her naked legs were red and rough. The hollows under her collar bones would make one weep. The whole person of this child, her gait, her attitude, the sound of her voice, the intervals between one word and another, her looks, her silence, her least motion, expressed and uttered a single idea: fear.
Fear was spread all over her; she was, so to say, covered with it; fear drew back her elbows against her sides, drew her heels under her skirt, made her take the least possible room, prevented her from breathing more than was absolutely necessary, and had become what might be called her bodily habit, without possible variation, except of increase. There was in the depth of her eye an expression of astonishment mingled with terror.
This fear was such that on coming in, all wet as she was, Cosette had not dared go and dry herself by the fire, but had gone silently to her work.
The expression of the countenance of this child of eight years was habitually so sad and sometimes so tragical that it seemed, at certain moments, as if she were in the way of becoming an idiot or a demon.
Never, as we have said, had she known what it is to pray, never had she set foot within a church. “How can I spare the time?” said the Thénardiess.
The man in the yellow coat did not take his eyes from Cosette.
Suddenly, the Thénardiess exclaimed out:
“Oh! I forgot! that bread!”
Cosette, according to her custom whenever the Thénardiess raised her voice, sprang out quickly from under the table.
She had entirely forgotten the bread. She had recourse to the expedient of children who are always terrified. She lied.
“Madame, the baker was shut.”
“You ought to have knocked.”
“I did knock, madame.”
“Well?”
“He didn’t open.”
“I’ll find out to-morrow if that is true,” said the Thénardiess, “and