It is not all in all sufficient to be wicked in order to prosper. The cook-shop was in a bad way. Thanks to the traveller’s fifty-seven francs, Thénardier had been able to avoid a protest and to honor his signature.
On the following month they were again in need of money. The woman took Cosette’s outfit to Paris, and pawned it at the pawnbroker’s for sixty francs.
As soon as that sum was spent, the Thénardiers 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.
As she had no longer any clothes, they dressed her in the cast-off petticoats and chemises of the Thénardier brats; that is to say, in rags. They fed her on what all the rest had left—a little better than the dog, a little worse than the cat.
Moreover, the cat and the dog were her habitual table-companions; Cosette ate with them under the table, from a wooden bowl similar to theirs. The mother, who had established herself, as we shall see later on, at M. sur M.
, wrote, or, more correctly, caused to be written, a letter every month, that she might have news of her child. The Thénardiers replied invariably, 'Cosette is doing wonderfully well.
' At the expiration of the first six months the mother sent seven francs for the seventh month, and continued her remittances with tolerable regularity from month to month. The year was not completed when Thénardier 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. The mother, whom they had persuaded into the belief that her child was happy, 'and was coming on well,' submitted,