It is not rare for the neatherd''s boy nowadays to bear the name of Arthur, Alfred, or Alphonse, and for the vicomte--if there are still any vicomtes--to be called Thomas, Pierre, or Jacques.
This displacement, which places the "elegant" name on the plebeian and the rustic name on the aristocrat, is nothing else than an eddy of equality.
The irresistible penetration of the new inspiration is there as everywhere else. Beneath this apparent discord there is a great and a profound thing,-- the French Revolution.
BOOK FOURTH.--TO CONFIDE IS SOMETIMES TO DELIVER INTO A PERSON''S POWER
CHAPTER III
It is not all in all sufficient to be wicked in order to prosper. The cook-shop was in a bad way.
Thanks to the traveller''s fifty-seven francs, Thenardier had been able to avoid a protest and to honor his signature.
On the following month they were again in need of money.
The woman took Cosette''s outfit to Paris, and pawned it at the pawnbroker''s for sixty francs. As soon as that sum was spent, the Thenardiers grew accustomed to look on the little girl merely as a child whom they were caring for out of charity; and they treated her accordingly.
As she had no longer any clothes, they dressed her in the cast-off petticoats and chemises of the Thenardier brats; that is to say, in rags. They fed her on what all the rest had left--a little better than the dog, a little worse than the cat.