Entrance on the Scene of a Doll — Les Misérables

The line of open-air booths starting at the church extends as far as the Thenardiers' hostelry. The booths are all lit, because the citizens will soon pass on their way to midnight mass with candles burning in paper funnels, which the schoolmaster, seated at the Thenardiers' table, calls a magical effect. In compensation, not a star is visible in the sky. The last stall, established precisely opposite the Thenardiers' door, is a toy-shop glittering with tinsel, glass, and magnificent objects of tin. In the first row, far forwards, on a background of white napkins, the merchant has placed an immense doll, nearly two feet high, dressed in a robe of pink crepe, with gold wheat-ears on her head, real hair, and enamel eyes. All that day this marvel has been displayed to the wonderment of every passer-by under ten years of age, without a mother in Montfermeil rich enough or extravagant enough to give it to her child. Eponine and Azelma have passed hours in contemplating it. Cosette herself has ventured to cast a glance at it, on the sly.

At the moment when Cosette emerges, bucket in hand, melancholy and overcome, she cannot refrain from lifting her eyes to that wonderful doll, toward the lady, as she calls it. The poor child pauses in amazement. She has not yet beheld that doll close to. The whole shop seems a palace to her. The doll is not a doll. It is a vision. It is joy, splendour, riches, happiness, appearing in a sort of chimerical halo to that unhappy little being so profoundly engulfed in gloomy and chilly misery. With the sad and innocent sagacity of childhood, Cosette measures the abyss which separates her from that doll. She says to herself that one must be a queen, or at least a princess, to have a thing like that. She gazes at that beautiful pink dress, that beautiful smooth hair, and she thinks how happy that doll must be. She cannot take her eyes from that fantastic stall. The more she looks, the more dazzled she grows. She thinks she is gazing at paradise. There are other dolls behind the large one, which seem to her to be fairies and genii. The merchant, pacing back and forth in front of his shop, produces on her somewhat the effect of being the Eternal Father.

In this adoration she forgets everything, even the errand with which she is charged. All at once the Thenardier's coarse voice recalls her to reality. What, you silly jade, you have not gone? Wait, I will give it to you. I want to know what you are doing there. Get along, you little monster. The Thenardier has cast a glance into the street and has caught sight of Cosette in her ecstasy. The stall is still a palace. The voice already owns the street.