Les miserables (Abridged) - Victor Hugo [156]
Azelma listened to Eponine with wonder.
Meanwhile, the drinkers were singing an obscene song, at which they laughed enough to shake the room. Thénardier encouraged and accompanied them.
As birds make a nest of anything, children make a doll of no matter what. While Eponine and Azelma were dressing up the cat, Cosette, for her part, had dressed up the sword. That done, she had laid it upon her arm, and was singing it softly to sleep.
The doll is one of the most imperious necessities, and at the same time one of the most charming instincts of female childhood. To care for, to clothe, to adorn, to dress, to undress, to dress over again, to teach, to scold a little, to rock, to cuddle, to put to sleep, to imagine that something is somebody—all the future of woman is there. Even while musing and prattling, while making little wardrobes and little baby-clothes, while sewing little dresses, little bodices, and little jackets, the child becomes a little girl, the little girl becomes a big girl, the big girl becomes a woman. The first baby takes the place of the last doll.
A little girl without a doll is almost as unfortunate and quite as impossible as a woman without children.
Cosette had therefore made a doll of her sword.
The Thénardiess, on her part, approached the yellow man. “My husband is right,” thought she; “it may be Monsieur Laffitte. Some rich men are so odd.”
She came and rested her elbow on the table at which he was sitting.
“Monsieur,” said she—
At this word monsieur, the man turned. The Thénardiess had called him before only brave man or good man.
“You see, monsieur,” she pursued, putting on her cloying look, which was still more unendurable than her ferocious manner, “I am very willing the child should play, I am not opposed to it; it is well for once, because you are generous. But, you see, she is poor; she must work.”
“The child is not yours, then?” asked the man.
“Oh dear! no, monsieur! It is a little pauper that we have taken in through charity. A sort of imbecile child. She must have water on her brain. Her head is big, as you see. We do all we can for her, but we are not rich. It’s no use writing to where she comes from; for six months we have had no answer. We think that her mother must be dead.”
“Ah!” said the man, and he fell back into his reverie.
“This mother was no great shakes,” added the Thénardiess. “She abandoned her child.”
During all this conversation, Cosette, as if an instinct had warned her that they were talking about her, had not taken her eyes from the Thénardiess. She listened. She heard a few words here and there.
Meanwhile the drinkers, all three-quarters drunk, were repeating their foul chorus with redoubled gaiety. It was highly spiced with jests, in which the names of the Virgin and the child Jesus were often heard. The Thenardiess had gone to take her part in the hilarity. Cosette, under the table, was looking into the fire, which was reflected from her fixed eye; she was again rocking the sort of rag baby that she had made, and as she rocked it, she sang in a low voice; “My mother is dead! my mother is dead! my mother is dead!”
At the repeated entreaties of the hostess, the yellow man, “the millionaire,” finally consented to sup.
“What will monsieur have?”
“Some bread and cheese,” said the man.
“Decidedly, it is a beggar,” thought the Thénardiess.
The revellers continued to sing their songs, and the child, under the table, also sang hers.
All at once, Cosette stopped. She had just turned and seen the little Thenardiers’ doll, which they had forsaken for the cat and left on the floor, a few steps from the kitchen table.
Then she let the bundled-up sword, that only half satisfied her, fall, and ran her eyes slowly around the room. The Thénardiess was