"I promise you to eat them," he said, in his gentle voice.
"I am not pleased with you," the woman replied.
Jean Valjean never saw any other human creature but this good woman: there are in Paris streets through which people never pass, and houses which people never enter, and he lived in one of those streets and one of those houses. During the time when he still went out he had bought at a brazier's for a few sous a small copper crucifix, which he suspended from a nail opposite his bed; that gibbet is ever good to look on. A week passed thus, and Jean Valjean still remained in bed. The porter's wife said to her husband, "The old gentleman upstairs does not get up; he does not eat, and he will not last long. He has a sorrow, and no one will get it out of my head but that his daughter has made a bad match."
The porter replied, with the accent of marital sovereignty,—
"If he is rich, he can have a doctor; if he is not rich, he can't. If he has no doctor, he will die."
"And if he has one?"
"He will die," said the porter.
The porter's wife began digging up with an old knife the grass between what she called her pavement, and while doing so grumbled,—
"It's a pity—an old man who is so tidy. He is as white as a pullet."
She saw a doctor belonging to the quarter passing along the bottom of the street, and took upon herself to ask him to go up.