Les Misérables, page 46
CHAPTER III--THE LARK
It is not all in all sufficient to be wicked in order to prosper. Thecook-shop was in a bad way.
Thanks to the traveller's fifty-seven francs, Thénardier had been ableto avoid a protest and to honor his signature. On the following monththey were again in need of money. The woman took Cosette's outfit toParis, and pawned it at the pawnbroker's for sixty francs. As soonas that sum was spent, the Thénardiers grew accustomed to look on thelittle girl merely as a child whom they were caring for out of charity;and they treated her accordingly. As she had no longer any clothes, theydressed her in the cast-off petticoats and chemises of the Thénardierbrats; that is to say, in rags. They fed her on what all the resthad left--a little better than the dog, a little worse than the cat.Moreover, the cat and the dog were her habitual table-companions;Cosette ate with them under the table, from a wooden bowl similar totheirs.
The mother, who had established herself, as we shall see later on, at M.sur M., wrote, or, more correctly, caused to be written, a letter everymonth, that she might have news of her child. The Thénardiers repliedinvariably, "Cosette is doing wonderfully well."
At the expiration of the first six months the mother sent seven francsfor the seventh month, and continued her remittances with tolerableregularity from month to month. The year was not completed whenThénardier said: "A fine favor she is doing us, in sooth! What does sheexpect us to do with her seven francs?" and he wrote to demand twelvefrancs. The mother, whom they had persuaded into the belief that herchild was happy, "and was coming on well," submitted, and forwarded thetwelve francs.
Certain natures cannot love on the one hand without hating on the other.Mother Thénardier loved her two daughters passionately, which caused herto hate the stranger.
It is sad to think that the love of a mother can possess villainousaspects. Little as was the space occupied by Cosette, it seemed toher as though it were taken from her own, and that that little childdiminished the air which her daughters breathed. This woman, like manywomen of her sort, had a load of caresses and a burden of blows andinjuries to dispense each day. If she had not had Cosette, it is certainthat her daughters, idolized as they were, would have received the wholeof it; but the stranger did them the service to divert the blows toherself. Her daughters received nothing but caresses. Cosette could notmake a motion which did not draw down upon her head a heavy shower ofviolent blows and unmerited chastisement. The sweet, feeble being, whoshould not have understood anything of this world or of God, incessantlypunished, scolded, ill-used, beaten, and seeing beside her two littlecreatures like herself, who lived in a ray of dawn!
Madame Thénardier was vicious with Cosette. Éponine and Azelma werevicious. Children at that age are only copies of their mother. The sizeis smaller; that is all.
A year passed; then another.
People in the village said:--
"Those Thénardiers are good people. They are not rich, and yet they arebringing up a poor child who was abandoned on their hands!"
They thought that Cosette's mother had forgotten her.
In the meanwhile, Thénardier, having learned, it is impossible to say bywhat obscure means, that the child was probably a bastard, and that themother could not acknowledge it, exacted fifteen francs a month, sayingthat "the creature" was growing and "eating," and threatening to sendher away. "Let her not bother me," he exclaimed, "or I'll fire her bratright into the middle of her secrets. I must have an increase." Themother paid the fifteen francs.
From year to year the child grew, and so did her wretchedness.
As long as Cosette was little, she was the scape-goat of the two otherchildren; as soon as she began to develop a little, that is to say,before she was even five years old, she became the servant of thehousehold.
Five years old! the reader will say; that is not probable. Alas! it istrue. Social suffering begins at all ages. Have we not recently seen thetrial of a man named Dumollard, an orphan turned bandit, who, from theage of five, as the official documents state, being alone in the world,"worked for his living and stole"?
Cosette was made to run on errands, to sweep the rooms, the courtyard,the street, to wash the dishes, to even carry burdens. The Thénardiersconsidered themselves all the more authorized to behave in this manner,since the mother, who was still at M. sur M., had become irregular inher payments. Some months she was in arrears.
If this mother had returned to Montfermeil at the end of these threeyears, she would not have recognized her child. Cosette, so pretty androsy on her arrival in that house, was now thin and pale. She had anindescribably uneasy look. "The sly creature," said the Thénardiers.
Injustice had made her peevish, and misery had made her ugly. Nothingremained to her except her beautiful eyes, which inspired pain, because,large as they were, it seemed as though one beheld in them a stilllarger amount of sadness.
It was a heart-breaking thing to see this poor child, not yet six yearsold, shivering in the winter in her old rags of linen, full of holes,sweeping the street before daylight, with an enormous broom in her tinyred hands, and a tear in her great eyes.
Enlarge
She was called the _Lark_ in the neighborhood. The populace, who arefond of these figures of speech, had taken a fancy to bestow this nameon this trembling, frightened, and shivering little creature, no biggerthan a bird, who was awake every morning before any one else in thehouse or the village, and was always in the street or the fields beforedaybreak.
Only the little lark never sang.
BOOK FIFTH.--THE DESCENT.
