{"chapter_no":"31","chapter_title":"Entrance on the Scene of the Doll","book_id":"3","book_name":"Springville","subchapter_no":"0","page_no":"531","page_number":"1","verses_count":0,"total_pages":2,"page_content":"

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Chapter 31<\/p>

Entrance on the Scene of the Doll<\/h1><\/p>

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The story of the young Cosette from <\/i>Les Miserables—The Doll Shop<\/i>.<\/i><\/p>

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The line of open-air booths starting at <\/i>the Church<\/i>, extended, as the reader will
remember, as far as the hostelry of the Thenardiers. These booths were all illuminated, because
the citizens would soon pass on their way to the midnight mass, with candles burning in paper
funnels, which, as the schoolmaster, then seated at the table at the Thenardiers' observed,
produced \"a magical effect.\" In compensation, not a star was visible in the sky.<\/i><\/p>

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The last of these stalls, established precisely opposite the Thenardiers'<\/i> <\/i>door, was a toy-
shop all glittering with tinsel, glass, and magnificent objects of tin. In the first row, and far
forwards, the merchant had placed on a background of white napkins, an immense doll, nearly
two feet high, who was dressed in a robe of pink crepe, with gold wheat-ears on her head, which
had real hair and enamel eyes. All that day, this marvel had been displayed to the wonderment of
all passers-by under ten years of age, without a mother being found in Montfermeil sufficiently
rich or sufficiently extravagant to give it to her child. Eponine and Azelma had passed hours in
contemplating it, and Cosette<\/i> <\/i>herself had ventured to cast a glance at it, on the sly, it is true.<\/i><\/p>

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At the moment when Cosette emerged, bucket in hand, melancholy and overcome as she
was, she could not refrain from lifting her eyes to that wonderful doll, towards the lady, as she
called it. The poor child paused in amazement. She had not yet beheld that doll close to. The
whole shop seemed a palace to her: the doll was not a doll; it was a vision. It was joy, splendor,
riches, happiness, which appeared in a sort of chimerical <\/i>halo to<\/i> that unhappy little being so
profoundly engulfed in gloomy and chilly misery. With the sad and innocent sagacity of
childhood, Cosette measured the abyss which separated her from that doll. She said to herself
that one must be a queen, or at least a princess, to have a \"thing\" like that. She gazed at that
beautiful pink dress, that beautiful smooth hair, and she thought, \"How happy that doll must be!\"
She could not take her eyes from that fantastic stall. The more she looked, the more dazzled she
grew. She thought she was gazing at paradise. There were other dolls behind the large one,
which seemed to her to be fairies and genii. The merchant, who was pacing back and forth in
front of his shop, produced on her somewhat the effect of being the Eternal Father.<\/i><\/p>

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In this adoration she forgot everything, even the errand with which she was charged.<\/i><\/p>

All at once the Thenardier's coarse voice recalled her to reality: \"What, you silly jade!
you have not gone? Wait! I'll give it to you! I want to know what you are doing there! Get along,
you little monster!\"<\/i><\/p>

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The Thenardier had cast a glance into the street, and had caught sight of Cosette in her
ecstasy.<\/i><\/p>

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Cosette fled, dragging her pail, and taking the longest strides of which she was capable.<\/i><\/p>"}