150 6 Les Miserables
with tapestry, against which stood tufted easy-chairs. Jean
Valjean sometimes said to her, smiling at his happiness in
being importuned: ‘Do go to your own quarters! Leave me
alone a little!’
She gave him those charming and tender scoldings
which are so graceful when they come from a daughter to
her father.
‘Father, I am very cold in your rooms; why don’t you have
a carpet here and a stove?’
‘Dear child, there are so many people who are better than
I and who have not even a roof over their heads.’
‘Then why is there a fire in my rooms, and everything
that is needed?’
‘Because you are a woman and a child.’
‘Bah! must men be cold and feel uncomfortable?’
‘Certain men.’
‘That is good, I shall come here so often that you will be
obliged to have a fire.’
And again she said to him:—
‘Father, why do you eat horrible bread like that?’
‘Because, my daughter.’
‘Well, if you eat it, I will eat it too.’
Then, in order to prevent Cosette eating black bread,
Jean Valjean ate white bread.
Cosette had but a confused recollection of her childhood.
She prayed morning and evening for her mother whom she
had never known. The Thenardiers had remained with her
as two hideous figures in a dream. She remembered that she
had gone ‘one day, at night,’ to fetch water in a forest. She