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_ There was, at Montfermeil, near Paris, during the first quarter
of this century, a sort of cook-shop which no longer exists.
This cook-shop was kept by some people named Thenardier,
husband and wife. It was situated in Boulanger Lane. Over the door
there was a board nailed flat against the wall. Upon this board
was painted something which resembled a man carrying another man on
his back, the latter wearing the big gilt epaulettes of a general,
with large silver stars; red spots represented blood; the rest of
the picture consisted of smoke, and probably represented a battle.
Below ran this inscription: AT THE SIGN OF SERGEANT OF WATERLOO
(Au Sargent de Waterloo).
Nothing is more common than a cart or a truck at the door of
a hostelry. Nevertheless, the vehicle, or, to speak more accurately,
the fragment of a vehicle, which encumbered the street in front
of the cook-shop of the Sergeant of Waterloo, one evening in the
spring of 1818, would certainly have attracted, by its mass,
the attention of any painter who had passed that way.
It was the fore-carriage of one of those trucks which are used
in wooded tracts of country, and which serve to transport thick
planks and the trunks of trees. This fore-carriage was composed
of a massive iron axle-tree with a pivot, into which was fitted
a heavy shaft, and which was supported by two huge wheels.
The whole thing was compact, overwhelming, and misshapen.
It seemed like the gun-carriage of an enormous cannon. The ruts of
the road had bestowed on the wheels, the fellies, the hub, the axle,
and the shaft, a layer of mud, a hideous yellowish daubing hue,
tolerably like that with which people are fond of ornamenting cathedrals.
The wood was disappearing under mud, and the iron beneath rust.
Under the axle-tree hung, like drapery, a huge chain, worthy of
some Goliath of a convict. This chain suggested, not the beams,
which it was its office to transport, but the mastodons and mammoths
which it might have served to harness; it had the air of the galleys,
but of cyclopean and superhuman galleys, and it seemed to have been
detached from some monster. Homer would have bound Polyphemus with it,
and Shakespeare, Caliban.
Why was that fore-carriage of a truck in that place in the street?
In the first place, to encumber the street; next, in order
that it might finish the process of rusting. There is a throng
of institutions in the old social order, which one comes across
in this fashion as one walks about outdoors, and which have
no other reasons for existence than the above.
The centre of the chain swung very near the ground in the middle,
and in the loop, as in the rope of a swing, there were seated
and grouped, on that particular evening, in exquisite interlacement,
two little girls; one about two years and a half old, the other,
eighteen months; the younger in the arms of the other. A handkerchief,
cleverly knotted about them, prevented their falling out.
A mother had caught sight of that frightful chain, and had said,
"Come! there's a plaything for my children."
The two children, who were dressed prettily and with some elegance,
were radiant with pleasure; one would have said that they were two
roses amid old iron; their eyes were a triumph; their fresh cheeks
were full of laughter. One had chestnut hair; the other, brown.
Their innocent faces were two delighted surprises; a blossoming
shrub which grew near wafted to the passers-by perfumes which seemed
to emanate from them; the child of eighteen months displayed her
pretty little bare stomach with the chaste indecency of childhood.
Above and around these two delicate heads, all made of happiness
and steeped in light, the gigantic fore-carriage, black with rust,
almost terrible, all entangled in curves and wild angles,
rose in a vault, like the entrance of a cavern. A few paces apart,
crouching down upon the threshold of the hostelry, the mother,
not a very prepossessing woman, by the way, though touching at
that moment, was swinging the two children by means of a long cord,
watching them carefully, for fear of accidents, with that animal
and celestial expression which is peculiar to maternity. At every
backward and forward swing the hideous links emitted a strident sound,
which resembled a cry of rage; the little girls were in ecstasies;
the setting sun mingled in this joy, and nothing could be more charming
than this caprice of chance which had made of a chain of Titans the
swing of cherubim.
As she rocked her little ones, the mother hummed in a discordant
voice a romance then celebrated:--
"It must be, said a warrior."
Her song, and the contemplation of her daughters, prevented her
hearing and seeing what was going on in the street.
In the meantime, some one had approached her, as she was beginning
the first couplet of the romance, and suddenly she heard a voice
saying very near her ear:--
"You have two beautiful children there, Madame."
"To the fair and tender Imogene--"
replied the mother, continuing her romance; then she turned her head.
A woman stood before her, a few paces distant. This woman also
had a child, which she carried in her arms.
She was carrying, in addition, a large carpet-bag, which seemed
very heavy.
This woman's child was one of the most divine creatures that it
is possible to behold. lt was a girl, two or three years of age.
She could have entered into competition with the two other little ones,
so far as the coquetry of her dress was concerned; she wore a cap of
fine linen, ribbons on her bodice, and Valenciennes lace on her cap.
The folds of her skirt were raised so as to permit a view of her
white, firm, and dimpled leg. She was admirably rosy and healthy.
The little beauty inspired a desire to take a bite from the apples
of her cheeks. Of her eyes nothing could be known, except that
they must be very large, and that they had magnificent lashes.
She was asleep.
She slept with that slumber of absolute confidence peculiar
to her age. The arms of mothers are made of tenderness; in them
children sleep profoundly.
As for the mother, her appearance was sad and poverty-stricken.
She was dressed like a working-woman who is inclined to turn into
a peasant again. She was young. Was she handsome? Perhaps; but in
that attire it was not apparent. Her hair, a golden lock of which
had escaped, seemed very thick, but was severely concealed beneath
an ugly, tight, close, nun-like cap, tied under the chin. A smile
displays beautiful teeth when one has them; but she did not smile.
Her eyes did not seem to have been dry for a very long time.
She was pale; she had a very weary and rather sickly appearance.
She gazed upon her daughter asleep in her arms with the air peculiar
to a mother who has nursed her own child. A large blue handkerchief,
such as the Invalides use, was folded into a fichu, and concealed her
figure clumsily. Her hands were sunburnt and all dotted with freckles,
her forefinger was hardened and lacerated with the needle; she wore
a cloak of coarse brown woollen stuff, a linen gown, and coarse shoes.
It was Fantine.
It was Fantine, but difficult to recognize. Nevertheless, on scrutinizing
her attentively, it was evident that she still retained her beauty.
A melancholy fold, which resembled the beginning of irony,
wrinkled her right cheek. As for her toilette, that aerial toilette
of muslin and ribbons, which seemed made of mirth, of folly,
and of music, full of bells, and perfumed with lilacs had vanished
like that beautiful and dazzling hoar-frost which is mistaken
for diamonds in the sunlight; it melts and leaves the branch quite black.
Ten months had elapsed since the "pretty farce."
What had taken place during those ten months? It can be divined.
After abandonment, straightened circumstances. Fantine had
immediately lost sight of Favourite, Zephine and Dahlia; the bond
once broken on the side of the men, it was loosed between the women;
they would have been greatly astonished had any one told them
a fortnight later, that they had been friends; there no longer
existed any reason for such a thing. Fantine had remained alone.
The father of her child gone,--alas! such ruptures are irrevocable,--
she found herself absolutely isolated, minus the habit of work and plus
the taste for pleasure. Drawn away by her liaison with Tholomyes
to disdain the pretty trade which she knew, she had neglected to keep
her market open; it was now closed to her. She had no resource.
Fantine barely knew how to read, and did not know how to write;
in her childhood she had only been taught to sign her name;
she had a public letter-writer indite an epistle to Tholomyes,
then a second, then a third. Tholomyes replied to none of them.
Fantine heard the gossips say, as they looked at her child:
"Who takes those children seriously! One only shrugs one's shoulders
over such children!" Then she thought of Tholomyes, who had shrugged
his shoulders over his child, and who did not take that innocent
being seriously; and her heart grew gloomy toward that man.
But what was she to do? She no longer knew to whom to apply.
She had committed a fault, but the foundation of her nature,
as will be remembered, was modesty and virtue. She was vaguely
conscious that she was on the verge of falling into distress,
and of gliding into a worse state. Courage was necessary;
she possessed it, and held herself firm. The idea of returning to
her native town of M. sur M. occurred to her. There, some one might
possibly know her and give her work; yes, but it would be necessary
to conceal her fault. In a confused way she perceived the necessity
of a separation which would be more painful than the first one.
Her heart contracted, but she took her resolution. Fantine, as we
shall see, had the fierce bravery of life. She had already
valiantly renounced finery, had dressed herself in linen, and had
put all her silks, all her ornaments, all her ribbons, and all
her laces on her daughter, the only vanity which was left to her,
and a holy one it was. She sold all that she had, which produced
for her two hundred francs; her little debts paid, she had only
about eighty francs left. At the age of twenty-two, on a beautiful
spring morning, she quitted Paris, bearing her child on her back.
Any one who had seen these two pass would have had pity on them.
This woman had, in all the world, nothing but her child, and the
child had, in all the world, no one but this woman. Fantine had
nursed her child, and this had tired her chest, and she coughed
a little.
We shall have no further occasion to speak of M. Felix Tholomyes.
Let us confine ourselves to saying, that, twenty years later,
under King Louis Philippe, he was a great provincial lawyer,
wealthy and influential, a wise elector, and a very severe juryman;
he was still a man of pleasure.
Towards the middle of the day, after having, from time to time,
for the sake of resting herself, travelled, for three or four sous
a league, in what was then known as the Petites Voitures des Environs
de Paris, the "little suburban coach service," Fantine found herself
at Montfermeil, in the alley Boulanger.
As she passed the Thenardier hostelry, the two little girls,
blissful in the monster swing, had dazzled her in a manner, and she
had halted in front of that vision of joy.
Charms exist. These two little girls were a charm to this mother.
She gazed at them in much emotion. The presence of angels is
an announcement of Paradise. She thought that, above this inn,
she beheld the mysterious HERE of Providence. These two little
creatures were evidently happy. She gazed at them, she admired them,
in such emotion that at the moment when their mother was recovering
her breath between two couplets of her song, she could not refrain
from addressing to her the remark which we have just read:--
"You have two pretty children, Madame."
The most ferocious creatures are disarmed by caresses bestowed
on their young.
The mother raised her head and thanked her, and bade the wayfarer
sit down on the bench at the door, she herself being seated
on the threshold. The two women began to chat.
"My name is Madame Thenardier," said the mother of the two little girls.
"We keep this inn."
Then, her mind still running on her romance, she resumed humming
between her teeth:--
"It must be so; I am a knight,
And I am off to Palestine."
This Madame Thenardier was a sandy-complexioned woman, thin and angular--
the type of the soldier's wife in all its unpleasantness;
and what was odd, with a languishing air, which she owed to her
perusal of romances. She was a simpering, but masculine creature.
Old romances produce that effect when rubbed against the imagination
of cook-shop woman. She was still young; she was barely thirty.
If this crouching woman had stood upright, her lofty stature and her
frame of a perambulating colossus suitable for fairs, might have
frightened the traveller at the outset, troubled her confidence,
and disturbed what caused what we have to relate to vanish.
A person who is seated instead of standing erect--destinies hang upon
such a thing as that.
The traveller told her story, with slight modifications.
That she was a working-woman; that her husband was dead;
that her work in Paris had failed her, and that she was on her way
to seek it elsewhere, in her own native parts; that she had left
Paris that morning on foot; that, as she was carrying her child,
and felt fatigued, she had got into the Villemomble coach when she
met it; that from Villemomble she had come to Montfermeil on foot;
that the little one had walked a little, but not much, because she
was so young, and that she had been obliged to take her up,
and the jewel had fallen asleep.
At this word she bestowed on her daughter a passionate kiss,
which woke her. The child opened her eyes, great blue eyes like
her mother's, and looked at--what? Nothing; with that serious
and sometimes severe air of little children, which is a mystery
of their luminous innocence in the presence of our twilight
of virtue. One would say that they feel themselves to be angels,
and that they know us to be men. Then the child began to laugh;
and although the mother held fast to her, she slipped to the ground
with the unconquerable energy of a little being which wished to run.
All at once she caught sight of the two others in the swing,
stopped short, and put out her tongue, in sign of admiration.
Mother Thenardier released her daughters, made them descend from
the swing, and said:--
"Now amuse yourselves, all three of you."
Children become acquainted quickly at that age, and at the expiration
of a minute the little Thenardiers were playing with the new-comer
at making holes in the ground, which was an immense pleasure.
The new-comer was very gay; the goodness of the mother is written
in the gayety of the child; she had seized a scrap of wood
which served her for a shovel, and energetically dug a cavity big
enough for a fly. The grave-digger's business becomes a subject
for laughter when performed by a child.
The two women pursued their chat.
"What is your little one's name?"
"Cosette."
For Cosette, read Euphrasie. The child's name was Euphrasie.
But out of Euphrasie the mother had made Cosette by that sweet
and graceful instinct of mothers and of the populace which changes
Josepha into Pepita, and Francoise into Sillette. It is a sort
of derivative which disarranges and disconcerts the whole science
of etymologists. We have known a grandmother who succeeded in turning
Theodore into Gnon.
"How old is she?"
"She is going on three."
"That is the age of my eldest."
In the meantime, the three little girls were grouped in an attitude
of profound anxiety and blissfulness; an event had happened;
a big worm had emerged from the ground, and they were afraid;
and they were in ecstasies over it.
Their radiant brows touched each other; one would have said
that there were three heads in one aureole.
"How easily children get acquainted at once!" exclaimed Mother Thenardier;
"one would swear that they were three sisters!"
This remark was probably the spark which the other mother had been
waiting for. She seized the Thenardier's hand, looked at her fixedly,
and said:--
"Will you keep my child for me?"
The Thenardier made one of those movements of surprise which signify
neither assent nor refusal.
Cosette's mother continued:--
"You see, I cannot take my daughter to the country. My work
will not permit it. With a child one can find no situation.
People are ridiculous in the country. It was the good God who caused
me to pass your inn. When I caught sight of your little ones,
so pretty, so clean, and so happy, it overwhelmed me. I said:
`Here is a good mother. That is just the thing; that will make
three sisters.' And then, it will not be long before I return.
Will you keep my child for me?"
"I must see about it," replied the Thenardier.
"I will give you six francs a month."
Here a man's voice called from the depths of the cook-shop:--
"Not for less than seven francs. And six months paid in advance."
"Six times seven makes forty-two," said the Thenardier.
"I will give it," said the mother.
"And fifteen francs in addition for preliminary expenses,"
added the man's voice.
"Total, fifty-seven francs," said Madame Thenardier. And she
hummed vaguely, with these figures:--
"It must be, said a warrior."
"I will pay it," said the mother. "I have eighty francs. I shall
have enough left to reach the country, by travelling on foot.
I shall earn money there, and as soon as I have a little I will return
for my darling."
The man's voice resumed:--
"The little one has an outfit?"
"That is my husband," said the Thenardier.
"Of course she has an outfit, the poor treasure.--I understood
perfectly that it was your husband.--And a beautiful outfit,
too! a senseless outfit, everything by the dozen, and silk gowns
like a lady. It is here, in my carpet-bag."
"You must hand it over," struck in the man's voice again.
"Of course I shall give it to you," said the mother. "It would
be very queer if I were to leave my daughter quite naked!"
The master's face appeared.
"That's good," said he.
The bargain was concluded. The mother passed the night at the inn,
gave up her money and left her child, fastened her carpet-bag
once more, now reduced in volume by the removal of the outfit,
and light henceforth and set out on the following morning,
intending to return soon. People arrange such departures tranquilly;
but they are despairs!
A neighbor of the Thenardiers met this mother as she was setting out,
and came back with the remark:--
"I have just seen a woman crying in the street so that it was enough
to rend your heart."
When Cosette's mother had taken her departure, the man said
to the woman:--
"That will serve to pay my note for one hundred and ten francs
which falls due to-morrow; I lacked fifty francs. Do you know
that I should have had a bailiff and a protest after me?
You played the mouse-trap nicely with your young ones."
"Without suspecting it," said the woman. _
Read next: VOLUME I - FANTINE: BOOK FOURTH - TO CONFIDE IS SOMETIMES TO DELIVER INTO A PERSON'S POWER: CHAPTER II.First Sketch of Two Unprepossessing Figures
Read previous: VOLUME I - FANTINE: BOOK THIRD - IN THE YEAR 1817: CHAPTER IX. A Merry End to Mirth
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