CHAPTER II--TWO COMPLETE PORTRAITS

  So far in this book the Thénardiers have been viewed only in profile;the moment has arrived for making the circuit of this couple, andconsidering it under all its aspects.

  Thénardier had just passed his fiftieth birthday; Madame Thénardier wasapproaching her forties, which is equivalent to fifty in a woman; sothat there existed a balance of age between husband and wife.

  Our readers have possibly preserved some recollection of this Thénardierwoman, ever since her first appearance,--tall, blond, red, fat, angular,square, enormous, and agile; she belonged, as we have said, to therace of those colossal wild women, who contort themselves at fairs withpaving-stones hanging from their hair. She did everything about thehouse,--made the beds, did the washing, the cooking, and everythingelse. Cosette was her only servant; a mouse in the service of anelephant. Everything trembled at the sound of her voice,--window panes,furniture, and people. Her big face, dotted with red blotches,presented the appearance of a skimmer. She had a beard. She was an idealmarket-porter dressed in woman's clothes. She swore splendidly; sheboasted of being able to crack a nut with one blow of her fist. Exceptfor the romances which she had read, and which made the affected ladypeep through the ogress at times, in a very queer way, the idea wouldnever have occurred to any one to say of her, "That is a woman."This Thénardier female was like the product of a wench engrafted on afishwife. When one heard her speak, one said, "That is a gendarme"; whenone saw her drink, one said, "That is a carter"; when one saw her handleCosette, one said, "That is the hangman." One of her teeth projectedwhen her face was in repose.

  Thénardier was a small, thin, pale, angular, bony, feeble man, who hada sickly air and who was wonderfully healthy. His cunning began here;he smiled habitually, by way of precaution, and was almost polite toeverybody, even to the beggar to whom he refused half a farthing. He hadthe glance of a pole-cat and the bearing of a man of letters. He greatlyresembled the portraits of the Abbé Delille. His coquetry consisted indrinking with the carters. No one had ever succeeded in rendering himdrunk. He smoked a big pipe. He wore a blouse, and under his blouse anold black coat. He made pretensions to literature and to materialism.There were certain names which he often pronounced to support whateverthings he might be saying,--Voltaire, Raynal, Parny, and, singularlyenough, Saint Augustine. He declared that he had "a system." Inaddition, he was a great swindler. A _filousophe_ [philosophe], ascientific thief. The species does exist. It will be remembered that hepretended to have served in the army; he was in the habit of relatingwith exuberance, how, being a sergeant in the 6th or the 9th lightsomething or other, at Waterloo, he had alone, and in the presence of asquadron of death-dealing hussars, covered with his body and savedfrom death, in the midst of the grape-shot, "a general, who had beendangerously wounded." Thence arose for his wall the flaring sign, andfor his inn the name which it bore in the neighborhood, of "the cabaretof the Sergeant of Waterloo." He was a liberal, a classic, and aBonapartist. He had subscribed for the Champ d'Asile. It was said in thevillage that he had studied for the priesthood.

  We believe that he had simply studied in Holland for an inn-keeper. Thisrascal of composite order was, in all probability, some Fleming fromLille, in Flanders, a Frenchman in Paris, a Belgian at Brussels, beingcomfortably astride of both frontiers. As for his prowess at Waterloo,the reader is already acquainted with that. It will be perceived thathe exaggerated it a trifle. Ebb and flow, wandering, adventure, wasthe leven of his existence; a tattered conscience entails a fragmentarylife, and, apparently at the stormy epoch of June 18, 1815, Thénardierbelonged to that variety of marauding sutlers of which we have spoken,beating about the country, selling to some, stealing from others, andtravelling like a family man, with wife and children, in a ricketycart, in the rear of troops on the march, with an instinct for alwaysattaching himself to the victorious army. This campaign ended, andhaving, as he said, "some quibus," he had come to Montfermeil and set upan inn there.

  This _quibus_, composed of purses and watches, of gold rings and silvercrosses, gathered in harvest-time in furrows sown with corpses, didnot amount to a large total, and did not carry this sutler turnedeating-house-keeper very far.

  Thénardier had that peculiar rectilinear something about his gestureswhich, accompanied by an oath, recalls the barracks, and by a signof the cross, the seminary. He was a fine talker. He allowed it to bethought that he was an educated man. Nevertheless, the schoolmaster hadnoticed that he pronounced improperly.12

  He composed the travellers' tariff card in a superior manner, butpractised eyes sometimes spied out orthographical errors in it.Thénardier was cunning, greedy, slothful, and clever. He did not disdainhis servants, which caused his wife to dispense with them. This giantesswas jealous. It seemed to her that that thin and yellow little man mustbe an object coveted by all.

  Thénardier, who was, above all, an astute and well-balanced man, was ascamp of a temperate sort. This is the worst species; hypocrisy entersinto it.

  It is not that Thénardier was not, on occasion, capable of wrath toquite the same degree as his wife; but this was very rare, and at suchtimes, since he was enraged with the human race in general, as he borewithin him a deep furnace of hatred. And since he was one of thosepeople who are continually avenging their wrongs, who accuse everythingthat passes before them of everything which has befallen them, and whoare always ready to cast upon the first person who comes to hand, as alegitimate grievance, the sum total of the deceptions, the bankruptcies,and the calamities of their lives,--when all this leaven was stirred upin him and boiled forth from his mouth and eyes, he was terrible. Woe tothe person who came under his wrath at such a time!

  In addition to his other qualities, Thénardier was attentive andpenetrating, silent or talkative, according to circumstances, and alwayshighly intelligent. He had something of the look of sailors, who areaccustomed to screw up their eyes to gaze through marine glasses.Thénardier was a statesman.

  Every new-comer who entered the tavern said, on catching sight of MadameThénardier, "There is the master of the house." A mistake. She was noteven the mistress. The husband was both master and mistress. She worked;he created. He directed everything by a sort of invisible and constantmagnetic action. A word was sufficient for him, sometimes a sign; themastodon obeyed. Thénardier was a sort of special and sovereign being inMadame Thénardier's eyes, though she did not thoroughly realize it.She was possessed of virtues after her own kind; if she had ever had adisagreement as to any detail with "Monsieur Thénardier,"--which wasan inadmissible hypothesis, by the way,--she would not have blamedher husband in public on any subject whatever. She would never havecommitted "before strangers" that mistake so often committed by women,and which is called in parliamentary language, "exposing the crown."Although their concord had only evil as its result, there wascontemplation in Madame Thénardier's submission to her husband. Thatmountain of noise and of flesh moved under the little finger of thatfrail despot. Viewed on its dwarfed and grotesque side, this was thatgrand and universal thing, the adoration of mind by matter; for certainugly features have a cause in the very depths of eternal beauty. Therewas an unknown quantity about Thénardier; hence the absolute empireof the man over that woman. At certain moments she beheld him like alighted candle; at others she felt him like a claw.

  This woman was a formidable creature who loved no one except herchildren, and who did not fear any one except her husband. She was amother because she was mammiferous. But her maternity stopped short withher daughters, and, as we shall see, did not extend to boys. The man hadbut one thought,--how to enrich himself.

  He did not succeed in this. A theatre worthy of this great talent waslacking. Thénardier was ruining himself at Montfermeil, if ruin ispossible to zero; in Switzerland or in the Pyrenees this penniless scampwould have become a millionaire; but an inn-keeper must browse wherefate has hitched him.

  It will be understood that the word _inn-keeper_ is here employed in arestricted sense, and does not extend to an entire class.

  In this same year, 1823, Thénardier was burdened with about fifteenhundred francs' worth of petty debts, and this rendered him anxious.

  Whatever may have been the obstinate injustice of destiny in this case,Thénardier was one of those men who understand best, with the mostprofundity and in the most modern fashion, that thing which is a virtueamong barbarous peoples and an object of merchandise among civilizedpeoples,--hospitality. Besides, he was an admirable poacher, and quotedfor his skill in shooting. He had a certain cold and tranquil laugh,which was particularly dangerous.

  His theories as a landlord sometimes burst forth in lightning flashes.He had professional aphorisms, which he inserted into his wife's mind."The duty of the inn-keeper," he said to her one day, violently, and ina low voice, "is to sell to the first comer, stews, repose, light, fire,dirty sheets, a servant, lice, and a smile; to stop passers-by, to emptysmall purses, and to honestly lighten heavy ones; to shelter travellingfamilies respectfully: to shave the man, to pluck the woman, to pickthe child clean; to quote the window open, the window shut, thechimney-corner, the arm-chair, the chair, the ottoman, the stool, thefeather-bed, the mattress and the truss of straw; to know how muchthe shadow uses up the mirror, and to put a price on it; and, by fivehundred thousand devils, to make the traveller pay for everything, evenfor the flies which his dog eats!"

  This man and this woman were ruse and rage wedded--a hideous andterrible team.

  While the husband pondered and combined, Madame Thénardier thought notof absent creditors, took no heed of yesterday nor of to-morrow, andlived in a fit of anger, all in a minute.

  Such were these two beings. Cosette was between them, subjected to theirdouble pressure, like a creature who is at the same time being ground upin a mill and pulled to pieces with pincers. The man and the woman eachhad a different method: Cosette was overwhelmed with blows--this was thewoman's; she went barefooted in winter--that was the man's doing.

  Cosette ran upstairs and down, washed, swept, rubbed, dusted, ran,fluttered about, panted, moved heavy articles, and weak as she was,did the coarse work. There was no mercy for her; a fierce mistress andvenomous master. The Thénardier hostelry was like a spider's web, inwhich Cosette had been caught, and where she lay trembling. The idealof oppression was realized by this sinister household. It was somethinglike the fly serving the spiders.

  The poor child passively held her peace.

  What takes place within these souls when they have but just quitted God,find themselves thus, at the very dawn of life, very small and in themidst of men all naked!