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Cosette plunged her hand into her apron pocket, and turned white. The fifteen-sous coin was not there.

“Come,” said the Thénardiess, “didn’t you hear me?”

Cosette turned her pocket inside out; there was nothing there. What could have become of that money? The little unfortunate could not utter a word. She was petrified.

“Have you lost it, the fifteen-sous coin?” screamed the Thénardiess, “or do you want to steal it from me?”

At the same time she reached her arm towards the cowhide hanging in the chimney corner.

This menacing movement gave Cosette the strength to cry out:

“Forgive me! Madame! Madame! I won’t do so any more!”

The Thénardiess took down the whip.

Meanwhile the man in the yellow coat had been fumbling in his waistcoat pocket, without being noticed. The other travellers were drinking or playing cards, and paid no attention to anything.

Cosette was writhing with anguish in the chimney-corner, trying to gather up and hide her poor half-naked limbs. The Thénardiess raised her arm.

“I beg your pardon, madame,” said the man, “but I just now saw something fall out of the pocket of that little girl’s apron and roll away. That may be it.”

At the same time he stooped down and appeared to search on the floor for an instant.

“Just so, here it is,” said he, rising.

And he handed a silver coin to the Thénardiess.

“Yes, that is it,” said she.

That was not it, for it was a twenty-sous coin, but the Thénardiess found her profit in it. She put the coin in her pocket, and contented herself with casting a ferocious look at the child and saying:

“Don’t let that happen again, ever.”

Cosette went back to what the Thénardiess called “her hole,” and her large eye, fixed upon the unknown traveller, began to assume an expression that it had never known before. It was still only an artless astonishment, but a sort of blind confidence was associated with it.

“O! you want supper?” asked the Thénardiess of the traveller.

He did not answer. He seemed to be thinking deeply.

“What is that man?” said she between her teeth. “It is some frightful pauper. He hasn’t a penny for his supper. Is he going to pay me for his lodging only? It is very lucky, anyway, that he didn’t think to steal the money that was on the floor.”

A door now opened, and Eponine and Azelma came in.

They were really two pretty little girls, rather city girls than peasants, very charming, one with her well-polished auburn tresses, the other with her long black braids falling down her back and both so lively, neat, plump, fresh, and healthy, that it was a pleasure to see them. They were warmly clad, but with such maternal art, that the thickness of the stuff detracted nothing from the coquetry of the fit. Winter was provided against without effacing spring. These two little girls shed light around them. Moreover, they reigned. In their toilet, in their gaiety, in the noise they made, there was sovereignty. When they entered, the Thénardiess said to them in a scolding tone, which was full of adoration: “Ah! you are here then, you children!”

Then, taking them upon her knees one after the other, smoothing their hair, tying over their ribbons, and finally letting them go with that gentle sort of shake which is peculiar to mothers, she exclaimed:

“Are they dowdies!”

They went and sat down by the fire. They had a doll which they turned backwards and forwards upon their knees with many pretty prattlings. From time to time, Cosette raised her eyes from her knitting, and looked sadly at them as they were playing.

Eponine and Azelma did not notice Cosette. To them she was like the dog. These three little girls could not count twenty-four years among them all, and they already represented all human society; on one side envy, on the other disdain.

The doll of the Thénardier sisters was very much faded, and very old and broken; and it appeared none the less wonderful to Cosette, who had never in her life had a doll, a real doll, to use an expression that all children will