702 Les Miserables
The stranger conjectured that this chamber connected
with that of the Thenardier pair. He was on the point of re-
treating when his eye fell upon the fireplace—one of those
vast tavern chimneys where there is always so little fire when
there is any fire at all, and which are so cold to look at. There
was no fire in this one, there was not even ashes; but there
was something which attracted the stranger’s gaze, never-
theless. It was two tiny children’s shoes, coquettish in shape
and unequal in size. The traveller recalled the graceful and
immemorial custom in accordance with which children
place their shoes in the chimney on Christmas eve, there to
await in the darkness some sparkling gift from their good
fairy. Eponine and Azelma had taken care not to omit this,
and each of them had set one of her shoes on the hearth.
The traveller bent over them.
The fairy, that is to say, their mother, had already paid
her visit, and in each he saw a brand-new and shining ten-
sou piece.
The man straightened himself up, and was on the point
of withdrawing, when far in, in the darkest corner of the
hearth, he caught sight of another object. He looked at
it, and recognized a wooden shoe, a frightful shoe of the
coarsest description, half dilapidated and all covered with
ashes and dried mud. It was Cosette’s sabot. Cosette, with
that touching trust of childhood, which can always be de-
ceived yet never discouraged, had placed her shoe on the
hearth-stone also.
Hope in a child who has never known anything but de-
spair is a sweet and touching thing.