684 Les Miserables
inquired of the traveller.
He made no reply. He appeared to be absorbed in
thought.
‘What sort of a man is that?’ she muttered between her
teeth. ‘He’s some frightfully poor wretch. He hasn’t a sou to
pay for a supper. Will he even pay me for his lodging? It’s
very lucky, all the same, that it did not occur to him to steal
the money that was on the floor.’
In the meantime, a door had opened, and Eponine and
Azelma entered.
They were two really pretty little girls, more bourgeois
than peasant in looks, and very charming; the one with
shining chestnut tresses, the other with long black braids
hanging down her back, both vivacious, neat, plump, rosy,
and healthy, and a delight to the eye. They were warmly
clad, but with so much maternal art that the thickness of
the stuffs did not detract from the coquetry of arrangement.
There was a hint of winter, though the springtime was not
wholly effaced. Light emanated from these two little beings.
Besides this, they were on the throne. In their toilettes, in
their gayety, in the noise which they made, there was sover-
eignty. When they entered, the Thenardier said to them in a
grumbling tone which was full of adoration, ‘Ah! there you
are, you children!’
Then drawing them, one after the other to her knees,
smoothing their hair, tying their ribbons afresh, and then
releasing them with that gentle manner of shaking off
which is peculiar to mothers, she exclaimed, ‘What frights
they are!’