ontfermeil with water; but this good man only worked until seven
o'clock in the evening in summer, and five in winter; and night once
come and the shutters on the ground floor once closed, he who had no
water to drink went to fetch it for himself or did without it.

This constituted the terror of the poor creature whom the reader has
probably not forgotten,--little Cosette. It will be remembered that
Cosette was useful to the Thenardiers in two ways: they made the mother
pay them, and they made the child serve them. So when the mother ceased
to pay altogether, the reason for which we have read in preceding
chapters, the Thenardiers kept Cosette. She took the place of a servant
in their house. In this capacity she it was who ran to fetch water when
it was required. So the child, who was greatly terrified at the idea of
going to the spring at night, took great care that water should never be
lacking in the house.

Christmas of the year 1823 was particularly brilliant at Montfermeil.
The beginning of the winter had been mild; there had been neither snow
nor frost up to that time. Some mountebanks from Paris had obtained
permission of the mayor to erect their booths in the principal street of
the village, and a band of itinerant merchants, under protection of the
same tolerance, had constructed their stalls on the Church Square,
and even extended them into Boulanger Alley, where, as the reader will
perhaps remember, the Thenardiers' hostelry was situated. These people
filled the inns and drinking-shops, and communicated to that tranquil
little district a noisy and joyous life. In order to play the part of
a faithful historian, we ought even to add that, among the curiosities
displayed in the square, there was a menagerie, in which frightful
clowns, clad in rags and coming no one knew whence, exhibited to
the peasants of Montfermeil in 1823 one of those horrible Brazilian
vultures, such as our Royal Museum did not possess until 1845, and which
have a tricolored cockade for an eye. I believe that naturalists call
this bird Caracara Polyborus; it belongs to the order of the Apicides,
and to the family of the vultures. Some good old Bonapartist soldiers,
who had retired to the village, went to see this creature with great
devotion. The mountebanks gave out that the tricolored cockade was a
unique phenomenon made by God expressly for their menagerie.

On Christmas eve itself, a number of men, carters, and peddlers, were
seated