1.C.3.4. ENTRANCE ON THE SCENE OF A DOLL
THE line of open-air booths starting at the church, extended,
as the reader will remember, as far as the hostelry of the Thenardiers.
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." In compensation, not a star was
visible in the sky.
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. In the first row, and far
forwards, the merchant had placed on a background of white
napkins, an immense doll, nearly two feet high, who was
dressed in a robe of pink crepe, with gold wheat-ears on her
head, which had real hair and enamel eyes. All that day, this
marvel had been displayed to the wonderment of all passersby
under ten years of age, without a mother being found in Montfermeil
sufficiently rich or sufficiently 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 vision. 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 herself 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 fantastic 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 fairies 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 along, you little monster!"
The Thenardier had cast a glance into the street, and had
caught sight of Cosette in her ecstasy.
Cosette fled, dragging her pail, and taking the longest
strides of which she was capable.