Madame Thénardier spotted Cosette, who seemed to be brushing the floor, but lazily so. At least, for Madame Thénardier's standards, it was lazy. "Now, look who's here!" her voice startled Cosette. "The little madam herself – pretending once again she's been so awfully good." Cosette was no Eponine and there for the Thénardiers made her work twice as much. Madame Thénardier was extra snippy due to her pregnancy, which no one was supposed to know about yet. "Better not let me catch you slacking!" she warned Cosette. "Better not catch my eye! Ten rotten francs your mother sends me, what is that gonna buy?" She was not Cosette's mother, no sir. A woman named Fantine stopped by one night, begging for a safe place for her daughter to stay while she searched for a job. She told them she would pay for whatever she could as long as her Cosette would have a bed in which to sleep and food to eat. Not ones to turn down extra money, the Thénardiers were quick to take baby Cosette in.

Madame Thénardier realized they were lacking in water, more noticeable as she was getting thirsty herself. "Now take that pail, my little mademoiselle," she ordered Cosette. "And go and draw some water from the well." She hardly gave her the chance to move before she began to rant, "We should never have taken you in, in the first place, how stupid the things that we do! Like mother, like daughter, the scum of the street!" No doubt that was Fantine's way of sending them what little money she sent, prostitution.

Eponine burst into the room then, "Mama!"

Madame Thénardier turned to face her daughter, about to comment on the new hat she was wearing, when all of a sudden she felt light headed. Next thing she knew, she was on the floor. Then her world faded to black.

"Mama?" Eponine rushed closer. "Mama!" She tried shaking her awake, but she was out cold. "Mama?!" Tears gathered in her eyes. "Daddy!" she wailed. Surely he would know what to do.