Cosette was a little girl who had been left by her mother several years before in the care of an innkeeper and his wife named Thénardier. She had proved very useful to these people in two ways. They were regularly paid by the mother for her care, and they used her as a servant. Thus it was that it was Cosette’s task to fetch water when needed. As she was terribly afraid of going at night to the spring, she took good care to have plenty of water in the house at all times.
Christmas of the year 1823 had been particularly fine at Montfermeil. There had been neither hail nor snow.
This Christmas Eve several men were sitting around a table in the lower hall of the inn. Cosette was in her usual place on the crosspiece of the kitchen table near the chimney. She was in rags, she had wooden shoes on her little bare feet, and she was knitting stockings by the light of the fire. These stockings were to be worn by the innkeeper’s little daughters.
Cosette was dreaming sad dreams; although she was only eight years old she had suffered so much that she felt like an old woman. She was thinking that it was night, dark night, and that she had had to fill so many pitchers that day for the many guests in the inn, that the water tank was quite empty. She took comfort, however, when she remembered that people drank very little water at night. There were many thirsty ones, of course, but they wanted wine.
From time to time one of the guests would look out into the street and exclaim, “It’s as black as an oven! Only a cat could find its way to-night without a lantern.” Then Cosette trembled.
Suddenly a peddler who was staying at the inn entered, and said in a hard voice, “My horse has had no water to drink.”
Cosette came out from under the table.
“Oh, yes, sir,” she said, “the horse has had water, a whole pailful, for I gave it to him myself, and I talked to him, too.”
“Come, now,” said the peddler, “it can’t be true that my horse has had enough water.”
Cosette slipped back to her place under the table.