Cosette cannot refrain from a sidelong glance at the big doll, still displayed at the toy-merchant's. Then she knocks. The Thenardier appears with a candle, calls her a little wretch who has been amusing herself, and hears that a gentleman wants a lodging. The amiable grimace of tavern-keepers lasts as long as the glance at the threadbare frock-coat. Enter, my good man. A second glance, a consultation with the husband still drinking with the carters, and the forefinger which means a regular beggar. There is no room left. Put me where you like, said the man. In the attic, in the stable. I will pay as though I occupied a room. Forty sous. A carter murmurs that the charge is only twenty. It is forty in his case. I don't lodge poor folks for less. The man barely moistens his lips and observes Cosette. She is nearly eight and seems hardly six. Her eyes are almost put out with weeping. Her hands are ruined with chilblains. Black and blue spots mark where the Thenardier woman has touched her. Fear has become the habit of her body. Wet as she is, she does not dare to approach the fire. The Thenardier asks for the bread. Cosette has forgotten it, lies, and is told to give back the fifteen-sou piece. The pocket is empty. The cat-o'-nine-tails comes down from its nail. The man in the yellow coat bends, seems to search the floor, and holds out a twenty-sou piece. Yes, that's it, said she. It was not it. Cosette returns to what is called her kennel. Her eyes, riveted on the traveller, take on an expression they have never worn: an innocent amazement, with a sort of stupefied confidence mingled with it.
Eponine and Azelma enter, two really pretty little girls, warmly clad, on the throne. Ah, there you are, you children, says the Thenardier in a grumbling tone full of adoration. What frights they are. They seat themselves in the chimney-corner with a faded, broken doll that is nonetheless admirable to Cosette, who has never had a real doll in her life. These three little girls do not yet reckon up four and twenty years between them, but they already represent the whole society of man: envy on the one side, disdain on the other. Cosette raises her eyes from her knitting. The Thenardier catches her. I will make you work to the tune of the whip. Bah, Madame, said the stranger, with an almost timid air, let her play. She must work, since she eats. He buys the unfinished pair of stockings for five francs, lays the coin on the table, and turns to Cosette. Now I own your work. Play, my child. Thenardier, in a sovereign manner, tells his wife he has seen millionaires with coats like that. Cosette picks up some old rags and her little lead sword. Eponine and Azelma throw their doll on the ground and swathe the cat. Cosette dresses up her sword and sings to it softly. The Thenardier comes to set her elbows on the table and calls him Monsieur. The child is not hers. She is a little beggar taken in through charity. They have written in vain to her native place. It must be that her mother is dead. Her mother didn't amount to much. She abandoned her child. Cosette, as though warned by some instinct that she is under discussion, has not taken her eyes from the Thenardier's face. She catches a few words. She rocks the sort of baby she has made, and she sings in a low voice, My mother is dead, my mother is dead, my mother is dead.
The yellow man consents at last to take supper. Bread and cheese. Decidedly he is a beggar, thinks Madame Thenardier. All at once Cosette turns and catches sight of the little Thenardiers' doll, abandoned for the cat. She drops the swaddled sword, creeps out on her hands and knees, seizes it, and is in her place again, only turned so as to cast a shadow on the doll. The happiness of playing with a doll is so rare for her that it contains all the violence of voluptuousness. No one has seen her except the traveller. A pink and shining foot, projecting from the shadow, strikes Azelma's eye. Cosette has dared to take their doll. The Thenardier's countenance becomes that of a Megaera. Cosette. Cosette takes the doll and lays it gently on the floor with a sort of veneration mingled with despair. Then, what is terrible to relate of a child of that age, she wrings her hands, and she weeps. Not the forest, nor the bucket, nor the lost money, nor the whip, nor even the words about her mother have been able to wring this from her. The traveller rises. All this noise for that. He goes straight to the street door. As soon as he has gone, the Thenardier profits by his absence to give Cosette a hearty kick under the table. The door opens again. He carries in both hands the fabulous doll which all the village brats have been staring at since morning, and he sets it upright in front of Cosette. Here. This is for you. Cosette slowly retreats and hides herself at the extreme end, under the table. Thenardier whispers to his wife: that machine costs at least thirty francs. No nonsense. Down on your belly before that man. Cosette ventures to emerge. Is the lady mine? The stranger's eyes seem to be full of tears. He nods and places the lady's hand in her tiny hand. She wheels round and seizes the doll in a transport. I shall call her Catherine, she said.
It is now the turn of Eponine and Azelma to gaze at Cosette with envy. The Thenardier, who hates this unknown individual worse than anyone in the world at that moment, sends the children to bed with a maternal air. Cosette goes off carrying Catherine in her arms. Midnight mass is over. The drinkers depart. The stranger remains in the same place and the same attitude, and has not said a word since Cosette left the room. At two in the morning Madame Thenardier declares herself vanquished and goes to bed. Thenardier reads the newspaper three times, then ventures to ask whether Monsieur is going to his repose. A chamber where one sleeps costs twenty sous. A chamber in which one reposes costs twenty francs. The man asks for the stable and is conducted to a chamber of rare splendour, all furnished in mahogany, which Thenardier calls their bridal chamber. The wedding bonnet under a glass globe was bought second-hand. Thenardier withdraws without wishing him a good night, as he does not wish to treat with disrespectful cordiality a man whom he proposes to fleece royally the following morning. His wife, not asleep, says she is going to turn Cosette out of doors tomorrow. How you do go on, he replies. The traveller takes a candle, quits the room, and follows a very faint and gentle sound like the breathing of a child. Under the staircase, among dust and spiders' webs, on a straw pallet with no sheets, Cosette is sleeping fully dressed, the doll pressed against her breast. Beside her bed there is only one of her wooden shoes. In the next room, through a glass door, he sees two small very white beds, and on the hearth two tiny children's shoes, each already holding a brand-new ten-sou piece. Far in, in the darkest corner, he recognises another object: Cosette's sabot, half dilapidated, covered with ashes and dried mud. Cosette, with that touching trust of childhood which can always be deceived yet never discouraged, has placed her shoe on the hearth-stone also. 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.
