Everyone, everywhere, everyday makes thousands of choices, each with many possible outcomes. This has lead many wise people to suppose that there exist many different parallel universes, each of them different from the next only in that someone, somewhere made an opposite decision to the one they made here.
For a little girl named Cosette destiny was decided, as Hugo describes it, by that fact that one Madame Thenardier chose to sit rather than stand. What would have happened if she stood? What would have happened if Fantine's travel arrangements had bypassed Montfermiel entirely? I don't know and certainly neither the story Hugo wrote nor the one I am about to tell will enlighten you. However, my story does concern changed fates, Cosette, and travel arrangements - the travel arrangements of a man named Javert, who may be familiar to you.

The inn had a blazing fire and therefore was pleasing. The keenness of the wind and squalling rain, the darkness of the night and the chill of early January ensured it that allure. Also, since Montfermiel was a small town, there was nowhere else for travellers to go, and nothing else for locals to do. This was unfortunate since 'The Sergeant of Waterloo' was, in plain terms, foul. Most of the locals failed to notice this and most of the travellers who arrived in the town were far too gone to care. Yet three members of the present company of 2nd January 1820 were not fooled - a visitor, a local and a resident.
There was only one stranger at The Sergeant that night, a tall imposing man who had jumped down from his seat next to the driver of that evening's diligence and made straight for the inn. He had then shook himself like a dog and slumped into the warmest seat next to the fire. To a casual observer, such as the schoolmaster Gassiot, their visitor looked happy. It was the happiness of a man who had finished a day's travelling and had managed to secure the best in the tavern. Such a front Javert presented to the observing world. He was, in fact, far from happy. His was the irritation of a man who is wearied from a day's travelling, soaked through to his shirt, whose extremities are blue and without feeling and who is quickly developing a morbid fear of gangrene, and who knows he has nothing to look forward to in the immediate future but bad food and a flea infested bed. Javert reached down to the small bag beside his chair, hoping to find his newspaper or the novel he had been reading. He laid his hand upon something sodden, spongy and wholly unpleasant - instinctively his hand recoiled and he pulled a face. The revolting object turned out to be his newspaper. That afternoons driving rain had found its way into his bag and caused the print to run like a horse under the lash. Next he retrieved his novel, equally drenched, the pages wavy and stuck together - utterly unreadable. Holding his copy of Emma between thumb and forefinger with a mixed expression of disappointment and disgust Javert tossed it into the fire 'I was almost enjoying that too', he mused ruefully.
Miss Austen's masterpiece disdained to catch fire, electing instead to smoulder slightly then roll back out of the fire to land at Javert's feet. He felt the sudden overwhelming urge to kick something in the manner of a spoilt and overtired two year-old. Why had he agreed to come? He hated the cold for one thing - for such a robust man his circulation was surprisingly poor. Not only that, but he had spent possible the most miserable period of his childhood in the north. After his mother had died he had wound up working in a tavern very much like this one. He cast a disdainful eye over the squalid, dingy establishment. - he could think of a thousand places he'd rather be, probably even if he confined himself to things beginning with the same letter he could come up with a good three-hundred. 'Just like Mere Roland's. Could well be he same place', came a voice in his head laced with just too much self-pity to be acceptable .'No, no it couldn't', he snapped backat himself, annoyed at the recalcitrant part of his brain that did not have proper respect for leagues of distance, decades of time or any othersolid reason why 'The Seargeant of Waterloo' and 'A La Belle Etoile' were not remotely connected in any logical, and therefore constructive, way. He was irritated by his own moment of sentimentality, even more so than by his tiredness and physical discomfort. And the fact that these petty, trivial things should still have power to discompose him was a further irritation Absorbed in these meditations Javert's eye fell on a little girl of four or five. Sentiment and exhaustion triumphed and he watched transfixed in despite of himself.
The child was skinny, dressed in rags and sweeping with a broom taller than herself whilst peering at the world through her hair with watchful eyes.

"You are looking at The Lark, M'sieur?" Javert started at the voice and turned to see who had interrupted him. He had been joined by a pale old man who looked like the ghost of a spider. It was the Gassiot who had been emboldened to approach the stranger by the prospect of intelligent conversation or, at least, a new and unheard set of idiocies.
"I beg your pardon M'sieur. I saw you alone and thought that, as a stranger, you might like company. My name is Edouard Gassiot - I keep the school in Montfermiel. I'm not troubling you am I?"

Javert regarded the man for a few moments in much the manner of a village idiot before replying, at a loss as to what else to say, "Not at all, you're most welcome."

"You're not a northerner, are you sir?" said Gassiot, taking in Javert's tanned skin and soft, nasal accent.

"Actually I was born in Calais, but I've lived in the South for a long time."

"Forgive me, but what business brings you to Montfermiel?"

"I'm with the police. I've been posted to a town near Arras - Montreuil-sur-Mer. Do you know it? Oh, and you must forgive me for not introducing myself - Inspector Javert, newly of the Pas de Calais Prefecture." He had forgotten just how nosy people were in the provinces. The two men fell silent for a few moments. Javert returned to watching the girl who was now clearing dishes from the tables.
"Why is the child called The Lark, Monsieur?" Javert asked idly, more to revive the conversation than out of any burning interest.

"Because she gets up at dawn and prefers to keep out of peoples' way. Her right name is Cosette."

"She is the innkeeper's daughter I suppose?"

"Oh no, no no! You see that pretty child there with the plaits and fur mittens? That is Thenardier's eldest daughter."

This fact aroused Javert's curiosity.

"And Cosette"

"A stray. Madame Thenardier always maintains that they took her in out of the kindness of their hearts when her mother abandoned her, but that's just not true. She promised the mother, a young working woman, to look after her in exchange for payment. The poor girl pays handsomely for the privilege and the Thenardiers get a slave labourer. Bah!"

"I see." Javert now slipped seamlessly into interrogation mode, garnering from Gassiot details of Thenardier's mistreatment of the child, his swindling of the mother as well as his less than legal business dealings and tax record. All of which required minimal effort on Javert's part since Gassiot was more than willing to talk - being both naturally loquacious and delighted and having a opportunity to put one over Thenardier, who tried to short-change the old man every day.
Needless to say that Javert's already jaundiced view of the Thenardiers was not biased further in their favour. He was seriously considering writing a report to the head of the Departement's revenue office.

"Oye, Gassiot! Are you gonna come here an' eat your stew?", hollered the landlord's burly wife.

"I'll take it over here Madame", replied Gassiot with deliberate meekness.

"Cosette, take this over there", she said, thrusting the bowl into the child's hands. The little girl crossed the floor with deliberately slow steps so as not to spill a drop. She had almost made it when Madame Thenardier, rushing through to drag the cat away from the supper of a customer who had gone outside to relieve himself, slammed a bulky hip into the child.. Cosette lost her balance completely, landing sprawled on the floor. The stew and its bowl landed on Javert. Madame Thenardier grabbed the child immediately, launching into a furious volley of abuse.

"Jesus, Mary and Joseph! I'm sorry M'sieur - clumsy, idle little slut! Stupid, good-for-nothing little" - the good woman exhibited considerable physical dexterity by simultaneously walloping the child's face and backside and shaking her - "You did that on purpose Miss Toad. I'll see to it that you can't sit down for a month!"

To a man the customers looked away, paying deliberate attention to their own business. Clearly this was a scene they'd witnessed many times before and had learned by experience that it was safest not to intervene or even seem to be paying too much attention.
Even years afterwards Javert would be quite unable to account to himself for what had come over him at that moment, all he could remember was that he had been incensed by the blatant unfairness of what he was witnessing. Rising with as much dignity as a man covered in mutton stew can, he stepped forward and caught the woman's arm and said in his most calmly official of tones

"That will do Madame, that will do."

"Begging your pardon M'sieur but what right have you to interfere in how I run my house?" the woman said, the politeness of her words not matching the expression on her face.

"I saw what happened Madame and the fault was yours - this is utterly unnecessary."

The woman looked from Cosette to Javert as if unsure as to which of them she would like to drop dead first and then said in a voice of heavy sarcasm "Well M'sieur, do tell me how I am to punish the idle little bitch, for I'm dying t'hear. Took the hussy in out of the kindness of my heart and see what thanks I get!"

"What? Out of the kindness of your what? Your heart did you say? That's rich! I've never heard such brazen lies in twenty years of police work! The kindness of your heart indeed - more like out of kindness to your pocket!"

The woman looked a little taken a-back. Someone sitting in the far corner sniggered.

"M'sieur - "

"I've a good mind to report you for cruelty, extortion and, while we're flinging mud, tax fraud," Javert fumed with a glance in the direction of Gassiot.

"Why you bastard of a bleeding hearted do-gooder!"

The woman looked for all the world as if she was going to smack Javert full in the face. He was momentarily taken aback by this (and by being addressed as a 'bleeding hearted do-gooder') until he realised that a woman who could beat a five year-old in front of an inn full of people without scruple would have no qualms about striking a grown man. However, the woman merely continued on her rant,

"Yeah, it's all very well for you, poncy rich bastard, coming in here telling me how to run my life. If you're so bloody concerned about the child them you bloody have her mate! Take her, look after the little slut - only get her outta my sight before I kill her!"

Javert stepped back as if the woman really had slapped him. Acquiring a child was no part of his plans, and yet he had gone too far to turn back. The entire pub was now staring at them and all the stubbornness of Javert's dogged nature would not let him lose the argument to this vile woman. There was really only one honourable thing he could say. Lowering him eyes and speaking with an authority he did not feel he said,

"I leave at four-thirty tomorrow morning. You will kindly have the child and her belongs ready to depart ten minutes beforehand."