The Thénardiess caught herself glaring at the boy's back as he left.
She hated the way he kept his spine so straight as he walked, the way he lifted his head and thrust out his chest. She hated the way she simpered whenever she saw him. She hated her husband's order to be polite to their only steady source of income.
After a moment, the sharp clicks of his boots faded from the hallway. She closed the door to their room and leaned against it, still glowering after the departed boy.
The Thénardiess could not find it in herself to turn her fury toward her husband when, more than a year ago, he had announced that the Patron-Minette, a street gang he had kept an eye on since their arrival in Paris, could make use of their eldest daughter. She was appalled; she was mortified; she was disgusted! Éponine was hardly ten years old! But her husband was unrelenting.
There were four men who came the most. One was so big that the Thénardiess feared he would crush her little daughter beneath him. They came because Éponine was too young to have children of her own. The youngest of the Patron-Minette, an adolescent only a few years older than Éponine, was the most frequent visitor. After a while she hardly even saw the others. The boy returned several times a week.
She would sit in this hallway, breathing deeply, eyes and fists clenched, leaning against this very door. The Thénardiess remembered holding her own pregnant belly and hoping they would be in a better place soon, a place where the new baby would be safe. Éponine's pained moans from beyond the door gave fuel to these dreams.
Feeling she had failed her first born, the Thénardiess began to focus all her motherly affections on Azelma. The younger girl was petted and pampered until her own father could not stand her. He never spoke of Azelma to his colleagues. The Thénardiess felt she had succeeded.
Everything changed when Éponine began to be sick each morning. The mother tried to ignore the signs; she was recovering from childbirth herself.
It had been a night like this one, almost a year ago, when the Thénardiess had stopped the boy from entering this door. Holding her baby son to her bosom, she had carefully informed him of what he had done. Her husband had demanded she be polite, and it had taken all of her resolve to obey. Then the husband himself had come onto the hallway from the far end; the boy looked as though he felt trapped. He jerked away from them as though he would escape, but there was nowhere to go. Her husband took him by the shoulder and they made the agreement then. He would pay them.
The children, whose ages together were not thirty, became parents.