"Look you, I cannot take the child with me to my town, for when a woman has a baby, it is a hard matter for her to get a situation. People are so foolish in our part. It was Heaven that made me pass in front of your inn; when I saw your little ones so pretty, so clean, so happy, it gave me a turn. I said to myself, "She is a kind mother." It is so; they will be three sisters. Then I shall not be long before I come back. Will you take care of my child?" "We will see, said Mother Thénardier. "I would pay six francs a month." Here a man's voice cried from the back of the tap-room,-- "Can't be done under seven, and six months paid in advance." "Six times seven are forty-two," said the landlady. "I will pay it," said the mother. "And seventeen francs in addition for extra expenses," the man's voice added. "Total fifty-seven francs," said Madame Thénardier; and through these figures she sang vaguely,-- "Il le faut, disait un guerrier." "I will pay it," the mother said; "I have eighty francs, and shall have enough left to get home on foot. I shall earn money there, and so soon as I have a little I will come and fetch my darling." The man's voice continued,-- "Has the little one a stock of clothing?" "It is my husband," said Mother Thénardier. "Of course she has clothes, poor little treasure. I saw it was your husband; and a fine stock of clothes too, a wonderful stock, a dozen of everything, and silk frocks like a lady. The things are in my bag." "They must be handed over," the man's voice remarked. "Of course they must," said the mother; "it would be funny if I left my child naked." The master's face appeared. "All right," he said. The bargain was concluded, the mother spent the night at the inn, paid her money and left her child, fastened up her bag, which was now light, and started the next morning with the intention of returning soon. Such departures are arranged calmly, but they entail despair. A neighbor's wife saw the mother going away, and went home saying,-- "I have just seen a woman crying in the street as if her heart was broken." When Cosette's mother had gone, the man said to his wife,-- "That money will meet my bill for one hundred and ten francs, which falls due to-morrow, and I was fifty francs short. It would have been protested, and I should have had a bailiff put in. You set a famous mouse-trap with your young ones." "Without suspecting it," said the woman. CHAPTER II A SKETCH OF TWO UGLY FACES.