Page 151 - les-miserables

had with her only one child, a little boy, the youngest. Where
were the other six? Perhaps she did not know herself. Every
morning she went to a printing office, No. 3 Rue du Sabot,
where she was a folder and stitcher. She was obliged to be
there at six o’clock in the morning—long before daylight in
winter. In the same building with the printing office there
was a school, and to this school she took her little boy, who
was seven years old. But as she entered the printing office
at six, and the school only opened at seven, the child had to
wait in the courtyard, for the school to open, for an hour—
one hour of a winter night in the open air! They would not
allow the child to come into the printing office, because he
was in the way, they said. When the workmen passed in the
morning, they beheld this poor little being seated on the
pavement, overcome with drowsiness, and often fast asleep
in the shadow, crouched down and doubled up over his
basket. When it rained, an old woman, the portress, took
pity on him; she took him into her den, where there was a
pallet, a spinning-wheel, and two wooden chairs, and the
little one slumbered in a corner, pressing himself close to
the cat that he might suffer less from cold. At seven o’clock
the school opened, and he entered. That is what was told to
Jean Valjean.
They talked to him about it for one day; it was a moment,
a flash, as though a window had suddenly been opened
upon the destiny of those things whom he had loved; then
all closed again. He heard nothing more forever. Nothing
from them ever reached him again; he never beheld them;
he never met them again; and in the continuation of this

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