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“This medicine was discovered by Louis Jacques Thenard in 1799
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fitting for those who are in expectation; thenarrations require
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This cook-shop was kept by some people named Thenardier, husband and wife
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"My name is Madame Thenardier," said the mother of the
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This Madame Thenardier was a sandy-complexioned woman, thin and angular—the type of the soldier's wife in all its unpleasantness; and what was odd, with a languishing air, which she owed to her perusal of romances
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Children become acquainted quickly at that age, and at the expiration of a minute the little Thenardiers were playing with the new-comer at making holes in the ground, which was an immense pleasure
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"How easily children get acquainted at once!" exclaimed Mother Thenardier; "one would swear that they were three sisters!"
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She seized the Thenardier's hand, looked at her fixedly, and said:—
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The Thenardier made one of those movements of surprise
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"I must see about it," replied the Thenardier
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"Six times seven makes forty-two," said the Thenardier
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"Total, fifty-seven francs," said Madame Thenardier
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"That is my husband," said the Thenardier
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A neighbor of the Thenardiers met this mother as she was
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This Thenardier, if he himself was to be believed, had been a soldier—a sergeant, he said
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Later on, when her hair, arranged in a romantically drooping fashion, began to grow gray, when the Magaera began to be developed from the Pamela, the female Thenardier was nothing but a coarse, vicious woman, who had dabbled in stupid romances
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Thanks to the traveller's fifty-seven francs, Thenardier had been able to avoid a protest and to honor his signature
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As soon as that sum was spent, the Thenardiers grew accustomed to look on the little girl merely as a child whom they were caring for out of charity; and they treated her accordingly
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As she had no longer any clothes, they dressed her in the cast-off petticoats and chemises of the Thenardier brats; that is to say, in rags
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The Thenardiers replied invariably, "Cosette is doing wonderfully well
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The year was not completed when Thenardier said: "A fine favor she is doing us, in sooth! What does she expect us to do with her seven francs?" and he wrote to demand twelve francs
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Mother Thenardier loved her two daughters passionately, which caused her to hate the stranger
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Madame Thenardier was vicious with Cosette
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"The sly creature," said the Thenardiers
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After leaving her little Cosette with the Thenardiers, she had
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At first, as the reader has seen, she paid the Thenardiers promptly
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They managed to obtain the address: Monsieur, Monsieur Thenardier, inn-keeper at Montfermeil
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" An old gossip was found, who made the trip to Montfermeil, talked to the Thenardiers, and said on her return: "For my five and thirty francs I have freed my mind
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This was the very month when the Thenardiers, after having demanded twelve francs instead of six, had just exacted fifteen francs instead of twelve
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It was at this point that she began to pay the Thenardiers irregularly
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But what then! Make her share her own destitution! And then, she was in debt to the Thenardiers! How could she pay them? And the journey! How pay for that?
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Thenardiers, who were not promptly paid, wrote to her constantly letters whose contents drove her to despair, and whose carriage ruined her
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She purchased a knitted petticoat and sent it to the Thenardiers
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This petticoat made the Thenardiers furious
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One day she received from the Thenardiers a letter couched in the following terms: "Cosette is ill with a malady which is going the rounds of the neighborhood
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At the expiration of a quarter of an hour she left her sewing and went to read the Thenardiers' letter once more on the staircase
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After all it was a ruse of the Thenardiers to obtain money
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About the same time, Thenardier wrote to her that he had waited with decidedly too much amiability and that he must have a hundred francs at once; otherwise he would turn little Cosette out of doors, convalescent as she was from her heavy illness, into the cold and the streets, and that she might do what she liked with herself, and die if she chose
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"Six months in which to earn seven sous a day! But what will become of Cosette? My daughter! my daughter! But I still owe the Thenardiers over a hundred francs; do you know that, Monsieur Inspector?"
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What I do is so vile! Oh, my Cosette! Oh, my little angel of the Holy Virgin! what will become of her, poor creature? I will tell you: it is the Thenardiers, inn-keepers, peasants; and such people are unreasonable
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At the foot of the memorandum Thenardier wrote, Received on account, three hundred francs
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"Christi!" said Thenardier, "let's not give up the child
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In the meantime Thenardier did not "let go of the child," and gave a hundred insufficient reasons for it
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This poor little Cosette who has no one in the world but me, and who is, no doubt, blue with cold at this moment in the den of those Thenardiers; those peoples are rascals; and I was going to neglect my duty towards all these poor creatures; and I was going off to denounce myself; and I was about to commit that unspeakable folly! Let us put it at the worst: suppose that there is a wrong action on my part in this, and that my conscience will reproach me for it some day, to accept, for the good of others, these reproaches which weigh only on myself; this evil action which compromises my soul alone; in that lies self-sacrifice; in that alone there is virtue
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"He has been in the galleys," said Thenardier
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"Let us put him to the wine test," said Thenardier
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Nevertheless, by dint of returning to the charge and of comparing and putting together the few obscure words which he did allow to escape him, this is what Thenardier and the schoolmaster imagined that they had made out:—
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Translation by Thenardier: A comrade of the galleys
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It will be remembered that Cosette was useful to the Thenardiers in two ways: they made the mother pay them, and they made the child serve them
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So when the mother ceased to pay altogether, the reason for which we have read in preceding chapters, the Thenardiers kept Cosette
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Some mountebanks from Paris had obtained permission of the mayor to erect their booths in the principal street of the village, and a band of itinerant merchants, under protection of the same tolerance, had constructed their stalls on the Church Square, and even extended them into Boulanger Alley, where, as the reader will perhaps remember, the Thenardiers' hostelry was situated
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On Christmas eve itself, a number of men, carters, and peddlers, were seated at table, drinking and smoking around four or five candles in the public room of Thenardier's hostelry
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The female Thenardier was attending to the supper, which was roasting in front of a clear fire; her husband was drinking with his customers and talking politics
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It was a little boy who had been born to the Thenardiers during one of the preceding winters,—"she did not know why," she said, "the result of the cold,"—and who was a little more than three years old
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When the persistent clamor of the brat became too annoying, "Your son is squalling," Thenardier would say; "do go and see what he wants
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So far in this book the Thenardiers have been viewed only in profile; the moment has arrived for making the circuit of this couple, and considering it under all its aspects
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Thenardier had just passed his fiftieth birthday; Madame Thenardier was approaching her forties, which is equivalent to fifty in a woman; so that there existed a balance of age between husband and wife
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Our readers have possibly preserved some recollection of this Thenardier woman, ever since her first appearance,—tall, blond, red, fat, angular, square, enormous, and agile; she belonged, as we have said, to the race of those colossal wild women, who contort themselves at fairs with paving-stones hanging from their hair
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" This Thenardier female was like the product of a wench engrafted on a fishwife
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Thenardier was a small, thin, pale, angular, bony, feeble man, who had a sickly air and who was wonderfully healthy
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Ebb and flow, wandering, adventure, was the leven of his existence; a tattered conscience entails a fragmentary life, and, apparently at the stormy epoch of June 18, 1815, Thenardier belonged to that variety of marauding sutlers of which we have spoken, beating about the country, selling to some, stealing from others, and travelling like a family man, with wife and children, in a rickety cart, in the rear of troops on the march, with an instinct for always attaching himself to the victorious army
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Thenardier had that peculiar rectilinear something about his gestures which, accompanied by an oath, recalls the barracks, and by a sign of the cross, the seminary
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Thenardier was cunning, greedy, slothful, and clever
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Thenardier, who was, above all, an astute and well-balanced man, was a scamp of a temperate sort
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In addition to his other qualities, Thenardier was attentive and penetrating, silent or talkative, according to circumstances, and always highly intelligent
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Thenardier was a statesman
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Every new-comer who entered the tavern said, on catching sight of Madame Thenardier, "There is the master of the house
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Thenardier was a sort of special and sovereign being in Madame Thenardier's eyes, though she did not thoroughly realize it
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She was possessed of virtues after her own kind; if she had ever had a disagreement as to any detail with "Monsieur Thenardier,"—which was an inadmissible hypothesis, by the way,—she would not have
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" Although their concord had only evil as its result, there was contemplation in Madame Thenardier's submission to her husband
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There was an unknown quantity about Thenardier; hence the absolute empire of the man over that woman
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In this same year, 1823, Thenardier was burdened with about fifteen hundred francs' worth of petty debts, and this rendered him anxious
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Whatever may have been the obstinate injustice of destiny in this case, Thenardier was one of those men who understand best, with the most profundity and in the most modern fashion, that thing which is a virtue among barbarous peoples and an object of merchandise among civilized peoples,—hospitality
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While the husband pondered and combined, Madame Thenardier thought not of absent creditors, took no heed of yesterday nor of to-morrow, and lived in a fit of anger, all in a minute
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The Thenardier hostelry was like a spider's web, in which Cosette had been caught, and where she lay trembling
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Her eye was black in consequence of a blow from Madame Thenardier's fist, which caused the latter to remark from time to time, "How ugly she is with her fist-blow on her eye!"
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She was somewhat reassured because no one in the Thenardier establishment drank much water
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But there came a moment when the child trembled; Madame Thenardier raised the cover of a stew-pan which was boiling on the stove, then seized a glass and briskly approached the cistern
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"Yes, it has," said Madame Thenardier
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"In truth, that is fair!" said Madame Thenardier, "if the beast
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The Thenardier returned to her stove, and tasted what was
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The line of open-air booths starting at the church, extended, as the reader will remember, as far as the hostelry of the Thenardiers
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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
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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
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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 along, you little monster!"
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The Thenardier had cast a glance into the street, and had
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As the Thenardier hostelry was in that part of the village which is near the church, it was to the spring in the forest in the direction of Chelles that Cosette was obliged to go for her water
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Now it was the Thenardier who appeared to her, with her hideous, hyena mouth, and wrath flashing in her eyes
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become of her? Where was she to go? In front of her was the spectre of the Thenardier; behind her all the phantoms of the night and of the forest
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It was before the Thenardier that she recoiled
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Her glance fell upon the water which stood before her; such was the fright which the Thenardier inspired in her, that she dared not flee without that bucket of water: she seized the handle with both hands; she could hardly lift the pail
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She panted with a sort of painful rattle; sobs contracted her throat, but she dared not weep, so afraid was she of the Thenardier, even at a distance: it was her custom to imagine the Thenardier always present
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In spite of diminishing the length of her stops, and of walking as long as possible between them, she reflected with anguish that it would take her more than an hour to return to Montfermeil in this manner, and that the Thenardier would beat her
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"It was Madame Thenardier
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"Is there no servant in Madame Thenardier's house?"
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dear to the female Thenardier
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"They are Madame Thenardier's young ladies; her daughters,
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The Thenardier appeared with a candle in her hand
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This gesture, and an inspection of the stranger's costume and baggage, which the Thenardier passed in review with one glance, caused the
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The Thenardier cast a second glance at him, paid particular attention to his frock-coat, which was absolutely threadbare, and to his hat, which was a little battered, and, tossing her head, wrinkling her nose, and screwing up her eyes, she consulted her husband, who was still drinking with the carters
