Page 694 - les-miserables

It must be supposed that in the course of the hour and
more which he had spent there he had taken confused notice
through his revery of that toy shop, lighted up by fire-pots
and candles so splendidly that it was visible like an illumi-
nation through the window of the drinking-shop.
Cosette raised her eyes; she gazed at the man approach-
ing her with that doll as she might have gazed at the sun; she
heard the unprecedented words, ‘It is for you”; she stared at
him; she stared at the doll; then she slowly retreated, and
hid herself at the extreme end, under the table in a corner
of the wall.
She no longer cried; she no longer wept; she had the ap-
pearance of no longer daring to breathe.
The Thenardier, Eponine, and Azelma were like statues
also; the very drinkers had paused; a solemn silence reigned
through the whole room.
Madame Thenardier, petrified and mute, recommenced
her conjectures: ‘Who is that old fellow? Is he a poor man? Is
he a millionaire? Perhaps he is both; that is to say, a thief.’
The face of the male Thenardier presented that expressive
fold which accentuates the human countenance whenever
the dominant instinct appears there in all its bestial force.
The tavern-keeper stared alternately at the doll and at the
traveller; he seemed to be scenting out the man, as he would
have scented out a bag of money. This did not last longer
than the space of a flash of lightning. He stepped up to his
wife and said to her in a low voice:—
‘That machine costs at least thirty francs. No nonsense.
Down on your belly before that man!’

694 Les Miserables