680 Les Miserables
cudgel on a bench, had seated himself at a table, on which
Cosette made haste to place a bottle of wine and a glass. The
merchant who had demanded the bucket of water took it
to his horse himself. Cosette resumed her place under the
kitchen table, and her knitting.
The man, who had barely moistened his lips in the wine
which he had poured out for himself, observed the child
with peculiar attention.
Cosette was ugly. If she had been happy, she might have
been pretty. We have already given a sketch of that som-
bre little figure. Cosette was thin and pale; she was nearly
eight years old, but she seemed to be hardly six. Her large
eyes, sunken in a sort of shadow, were almost put out with
weeping. The corners of her mouth had that curve of ha-
bitual anguish which is seen in condemned persons and
desperately sick people. Her hands were, as her mother had
divined, ‘ruined with chilblains.’ The fire which illuminat-
ed her at that moment brought into relief all the angles of
her bones, and rendered her thinness frightfully apparent.
As she was always shivering, she had acquired the hab-
it of pressing her knees one against the other. Her entire
clothing was but a rag which would have inspired pity in
summer, and which inspired horror in winter. All she had
on was hole-ridden linen, not a scrap of woollen. Her skin
was visible here and there and everywhere black and blue
spots could be descried, which marked the places where the
Thenardier woman had touched her. Her naked legs were
thin and red. The hollows in her neck were enough to make
one weep. This child’s whole person, her mien, her attitude,