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The lower she descended, the darker everything grew
about her, the more radiant shone that little angel at the bot-
tom of her heart. She said, ‘When I get rich, I will have my
Cosette with me;’ and she laughed. Her cough did not leave
her, and she had sweats on her back.
One day she received from the Thenardiers a letter
couched in the following terms: ‘Cosette is ill with a malady
which is going the rounds of the neighborhood. A miliary
fever, they call it. Expensive drugs are required. This is ru-
ining us, and we can no longer pay for them. If you do not
send us forty francs before the week is out, the little one will
be dead.’
She burst out laughing, and said to her old neighbor:
‘Ah! they are good! Forty francs! the idea! That makes two
napoleons! Where do they think I am to get them? These
peasants are stupid, truly.’
Nevertheless she went to a dormer window in the stair-
case and read the letter once more. Then she descended the
stairs and emerged, running and leaping and still laugh-
ing.
Some one met her and said to her, ‘What makes you so
gay?’
She replied: ‘A fine piece of stupidity that some country
people have written to me. They demand forty francs of me.
So much for you, you peasants!’
As she crossed the square, she saw a great many people
collected around a carriage of eccentric shape, upon the top
of which stood a man dressed in red, who was holding forth.
He was a quack dentist on his rounds, who was offering to