No sheets. This was placed on the floor.
In this bed Cosette was sleeping.
The man approached and gazed down upon her.
Cosette was in a profound sleep; she was fully dressed.
In the winter she did not undress, in order that she might not be so cold.
Against her breast was pressed the doll, whose large eyes, wide open, glittered in the dark.
From time to time she gave vent to a deep sigh as though she were on the point of waking, and she strained the doll almost convulsively in her arms.
Beside her bed there was only one of her wooden shoes.
A door which stood open near Cosette's pallet permitted a view of a rather large, dark room.
The stranger stepped into it. At the further extremity, through a glass door, he saw two small, very white beds.
They belonged to Eponine and Azelma. Behind these beds, and half hidden, stood an uncurtained wicker cradle, in which the little boy who had cried all the evening lay asleep.
The stranger conjectured that this chamber connected with that of the Thenardier pair.
He was on the point of retreating when his eye fell upon the fireplace--one of those vast tavern chimneys where there is always so little fire when there is any fire at all, and which are so cold to look at.
There was no fire in this one, there was not even ashes; but there was something which attracted the stranger's gaze, nevertheless.
It was two tiny children's shoes, coquettish in shape and unequal in size.
The traveller recalled the graceful and immemorial custom in accordance with which children place their shoes in the chimney on Christmas eve, there to await in the darkness some sparkling gift from their good fairy. Eponine and Azelma had taken care not to omit this, and each of them had set one of her shoes on the hearth.
The traveller bent over them.
The fairy, that is to say, their mother, had already paid her visit, and in each he saw a brand-new and shining ten-sou piece.
The man straightened himself up, and was on the point of withdrawing, when far in, in the darkest corner of the hearth, he caught sight of another object.
He looked at it, and recognized a wooden shoe, a frightful shoe of the coarsest description, half dilapidated and all covered with ashes and dried mud.