ller had risen to his feet.
"What is the matter?" he said to the Thenardier.
"Don''t you see?" said the Thenardier, pointing to the corpus delicti which lay at Cosette''s feet.
"Well, what of it?" resumed the man.
"That beggar," replied the Thenardier, "has permitted herself to touch the children''s doll!"
"All this noise for that!" said the man; "well, what if she did play with that doll?"
"She touched it with her dirty hands!" pursued the Thenardier, "with her frightful hands!"
Here Cosette redoubled her sobs.
"Will you stop your noise?" screamed the Thenardier.
The man went straight to the street door, opened it, and stepped out.
As soon as he had gone, the Thenardier profited by his absence to give Cosette a hearty kick under the table, which made the child utter loud cries.
The door opened again, the man re-appeared; he carried in both hands the fabulous doll which we have mentioned, and which all the village brats had been staring at ever since the morning, and he set it upright in front of Cosette, saying:--
"Here; this is for you."
It must be supposed that in the course of the hour and more which he had spent there he had taken confused notice through his revery of that toy shop, lighted up by fire-pots and candles so splendidly that it was visible like an illumination through the window of the drinking-shop.