Page 655 - les-miserables

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 vi-
sion. It was joy, splendor, riches, happiness, which appeared
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 measured
the abyss which separated her from that doll. She said to her-
self that one must be a queen, or at least a princess, to have a
‘thing’ like that. She gazed at that beautiful pink dress, that
beautiful smooth hair, and she thought, ‘How happy that
doll must be!’ She could not take her eyes from that fantas-
tic stall. The more she looked, the more dazzled she grew.
She thought she was gazing at paradise. There were other
dolls behind the large one, which seemed to her to be fair-
ies and genii. The merchant, who was pacing back and forth
in front of his shop, produced on her somewhat the effect of
being the Eternal Father.
In this adoration she forgot everything, even the errand
with which she was charged.
All at once the Thenardier’s coarse voice recalled her to
reality: ‘What, you silly jade! you have not gone? Wait! I’ll
give it to you! I want to know what you are doing there! Get

655