All at once one of the pedlers who lodged in the hostelry entered, and said in a harsh voice:—
“My horse has not been watered.”
“Yes, it has,” said Madame Thenardier.
“I tell you that it has not,” retorted the pedler.
Cosette had emerged from under the table.
“Oh, yes, sir!” said she, “the horse has had a drink; he drank out of a bucket, a whole bucketful, and it was I who took the water to him, and I spoke to him.”
It was not true; Cosette lied.
“There’s a brat as big as my fist who tells lies as big as the house,” exclaimed the pedler.
“I tell you that he has not been watered, you little jade!
He has a way of blowing when he has had no water, which I know well.”
Cosette persisted, and added in a voice rendered hoarse with anguish, and which was hardly audible:—
“And he drank heartily.”
“Come,” said the pedler, in a rage, “this won’t do at all, let my horse be watered, and let that be the end of it!”
Cosette crept under the table again.
“In truth, that is fair!” said Madame Thenardier, “if the beast has not been watered, it must be.”
Then glancing about her:—
“Well, now! Where’s that other beast?”
She bent down and discovered Cosette cowering at the other end of the table, almost under the drinkers’ feet.
“Are you coming?” shrieked Madame Thenardier.
Cosette crawled out of the sort of hole in which she had hidden herself.
The Thenardier resumed:— “Mademoiselle Dog-lack-name, go and water that horse.”
“But, Madame,” said Cosette, feebly, “there is no water.”
The Thenardier threw the street door wide open:—
“Well, go and get some, then!”
Cosette dropped her head, and went for an empty bucket which stood near the chimney-corner.
This bucket was bigger than she was, and the child could have set down in it at her ease.
The Thenardier returned to her stove, and tasted what was in the stewpan, with a wooden spoon, grumbling the while:—
“There’s plenty in the spring.
There never was such a malicious creature as that.
I think I should have done better to strain my onions.”
Then she rummaged in a drawer which contained sous, pepper, and shallots.
“See here, Mam’selle Toad,” she added, “on your way back, you will get a big loaf from the baker.
Here’s a fifteen-sou piece.”
Cosette had a little pocket on one side of her apron; she took the coin without saying a word, and put it in that pocket.
Then she stood motionless, bucket in hand, the open door before her. She seemed to be waiting for some one to come to her rescue.
“Get along with you!” screamed the Thenardier.
Cosette went out.
The door closed behind her.
CHAPTER IV—ENTRANCE ON THE SCENE OF A DOLL
The line of open-air booths starting at the church, extended, as the reader will remember, as far as the hostelry of the Thenardiers.
These booths were all illuminated, because the citizens would soon pass on their way to the midnight mass, with candles burning in paper funnels, which, as the schoolmaster, then seated at the table at the Thenardiers’ observed, produced “a magical effect.”
In compensation, not a star was visible in the sky.
The last of these stalls, established precisely opposite the Thenardiers’ door, was a toy-shop all glittering with tinsel, glass, and magnificent objects of tin.
In the first row, and far forwards, the merchant had placed on a background of white napkins, an immense doll, nearly two feet high, who was dressed in a robe of pink crepe, with gold wheat-ears on her head, which had real hair and enamel eyes.
All that day, this marvel had been displayed to the wonderment of all passers-by under ten years of age, without a mother being found in Montfermeil sufficiently rich or sufficiently extravagant to give it to her child.
Eponine and Azelma had passed hours in contemplating it, and Cosette herself had ventured to cast a glance at it, on the sly, it is true.
At the moment when Cosette emerged, bucket in hand, melancholy and overcome as she was, she could not refrain from lifting her eyes to that wonderful doll, towards the lady, as she called it.
The poor child paused in amazement.
She had not yet beheld that doll close to.
The whole shop seemed a palace to her: the doll was not a doll; it was a vision.