Every new-comer who entered the tavern said, on catching sight of Madame Thenardier, "There is the master of the house." A mistake.
She was not even the mistress.
The husband was both master and mistress.
She worked; he created.
He directed everything by a sort of invisible and constant magnetic action. A word was sufficient for him, sometimes a sign; the mastodon obeyed. Thenardier was a sort of special and sovereign being in Madame Thenardier''s eyes, though she did not thoroughly realize it. She was possessed of virtues after her own kind; if she had ever had a disagreement as to any detail with "Monsieur Thenardier,"--which was an inadmissible hypothesis, by the way,--she would not have blamed her husband in public on any subject whatever.
She would never have committed "before strangers" that mistake so often committed by women, and which is called in parliamentary language, "exposing the crown." Although their concord had only evil as its result, there was contemplation in Madame Thenardier''s submission to her husband. That mountain of noise and of flesh moved under the little finger of that frail despot.
Viewed on its dwarfed and grotesque side, this was that grand and universal thing, the adoration of mind by matter; for certain ugly features have a cause in the very depths of eternal beauty.
There was an unknown quantity about Thenardier; hence the absolute empire of the man over that woman.