Part II, Book 3, Chapter 3
Men Must Have Wine and Horses Must Have Water
Four travelers arrive at the inn, and Cosette is beset with anxiety over the fact that there’s no water left in the house. It goes without saying that this is not a healthy emotional state for an 8-year-old to be in. (Did I mention that she’s currently sporting a black eye from being hit by Madame Thénardier?)
Cosette consoles herself with the fact that thirsty guests drink wine, not water, and then: one of the travelers complains that his horse hasn’t been watered.
Cosette crawls out from under the table, where she apparently lives, and emphatically claims that the guy’s horse totally drank water, a whole bucketful, she brought the water herself and watched the horse drink. She is lying her socks off, or at least she would be if she was wearing socks, which she isn’t because the Thénardiers are demons. It is not a good sign that Cosette is so beaten down and scared that she’s become a flagrant liar!
Madame Thénardier then orders Cosette to water the horse, and Cosette protests that there’s no water left in the house—just a few minutes earlier, she watched Madame fill half a glass with what little water was left in the cistern. Madame’s response is to throw the door open to the pitch-black night and order Cosette to go fetch more water. Good lord, Montfermeil, you know the Ancient Romans figured out plumbing, right?
I am very conflicted here. On the one hand, the minute I was made aware of a horse that needed water, I got very concerned for the horse. Horses need to drink after they’ve been working! Not giving them water is abuse! On the other hand, all of this that Cosette is enduring is abuse beyond abuse. It is a monumentally shitty situation, all because some villagers couldn’t figure out centuries-old aqueduct technology.
Cosette reluctantly gets the bucket—not a cute little bucket, like what you see Snow White dipping into a well. No, this is a bucket bigger than Cosette herself, a bucket so big that she could easily sit in it. The horses I work with all have these giant buckets of water in their stalls, massive plastic tubs that a toddler could swim in, and this is precisely the type of bucket I pictured poor Cosette having to lug.
Madame gives Cosette a 15-sou coin—not as payment for the work, hahahahaha are you new here? The coin is an assignment for another task on top of fetching water; Cosette is supposed to pick up bread from the baker on the way back.
Okay, I am a full grown adult in pretty great physical shape, and I couldn’t haul a giant tub of water for a mile and carry bread. I once hauled a tote bag with a melon and a half-jug of fresh juice from the farmers’ market for a mile and wanted to die. (Again, I am a full grown adult.) This is absolutely absurd. It’s the worst episode of Old Enough! ever.
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