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Updated: June 26, 2025
But whoever he was, bound with ropes, surrounded with executioners, half plunged, so to speak, in a grave which was closing in upon him to the extent of a degree with every moment that passed, in the presence of Thenardier's wrath, as in the presence of his sweetness, this man remained impassive; and Marius could not refrain from admiring at such a moment the superbly melancholy visage.
He had evidence, a certain date, irrefragable proof, these two newspapers had not been printed expressly for the purpose of backing up Thenardier's statements; the note printed in the Moniteur had been an administrative communication from the Prefecture of Police. Marius could not doubt. The information of the cashier-clerk had been false, and he himself had been deceived.
Thenardier's well-grounded observation still further obscured for Marius the dense mystery which enveloped that grave and singular person on whom Courfeyrac had bestowed the sobriquet of Monsieur Leblanc.
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. This room resembled all drinking-shop rooms, tables, pewter jugs, bottles, drinkers, smokers; but little light and a great deal of noise.
"Are you alone there?" "Yes, sir." Another pause ensued. Cosette lifted up her voice: "That is to say, there are two little girls." "What little girls?" "Ponine and Zelma." This was the way the child simplified the romantic names so dear to the female Thenardier. "Who are Ponine and Zelma?" "They are Madame Thenardier's young ladies; her daughters, as you would say." "And what do those girls do?"
Montparnasse himself, who was, perhaps, almost Thenardier's son-in-law, yielded. A moment more, and they would be gone. Thenardier was panting on his wall like the shipwrecked sufferers of the Meduse on their raft when they beheld the vessel which had appeared in sight vanish on the horizon. He dared not call to them; a cry might be heard and ruin everything.
Their radiant brows touched each other; one would have said that there were three heads in one aureole. "How easily children get acquainted at once!" exclaimed Mother Thenardier; "one would swear that they were three sisters!" This remark was probably the spark which the other mother had been waiting for. She seized the Thenardier's hand, looked at her fixedly, and said:
The fatigue of living is insupportable; death is sooner over with. Then he reflected that he had still two duties to fulfil: to inform Cosette of his death and send her a final farewell, and to save from the impending catastrophe which was in preparation, that poor child, Eponine's brother and Thenardier's son.
"Ah!" said the man, and fell into his revery once more. "Her mother didn't amount to much," added the Thenardier; "she abandoned her child." During the whole of this conversation Cosette, as though warned by some instinct that she was under discussion, had not taken her eyes from the Thenardier's face; she listened vaguely; she caught a few words here and there.
Cosette was meditating sadly; for, although she was only eight years old, she had already suffered so much that she reflected with the lugubrious air of an old woman. 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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