Page 651 - les-miserables

of wine would have appeared a savage to all these men. But
there came a moment when the child trembled; Madame
Thenardier raised the cover of a stew-pan which was boil-
ing on the stove, then seized a glass and briskly approached
the cistern. She turned the faucet; the child had raised her
head and was following all the woman’s movements. A thin
stream of water trickled from the faucet, and half filled the
glass. ‘Well,’ said she, ‘there is no more water!’ A momen-
tary silence ensued. The child did not breathe.
‘Bah!’ resumed Madame Thenardier, examining the half-
filled glass, ‘this will be enough.’
Cosette applied herself to her work once more, but for a
quarter of an hour she felt her heart leaping in her bosom
like a big snow-flake.
She counted the minutes that passed in this manner, and
wished it were the next morning.
From time to time one of the drinkers looked into the
street, and exclaimed, ‘It’s as black as an oven!’ or, ‘One
must needs be a cat to go about the streets without a lantern
at this hour!’ And Cosette trembled.
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.’

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