A ROSE IN WRETCHEDNESS.
A very young girl was standing in the half-open door. The sky-light,
through which light entered, was exactly opposite the door, and threw
upon this face a sallow gleam. She was a pale, wretched, fleshless
creature, and had only a chemise and a petticoat upon her shivering and
frozen nudity. For waist-belt she had a piece of string, for head-dress
another; pointed shoulders emerged from her chemise; she was of a
yellow lymphatic pallor, cadaverous collar-bones, hands red, mouth half
open and degraded, with few teeth, the eye was sunken and hollow, and
she had the outline of an abortive girl and the look of a corrupted old
woman, or fifty years blended with fifteen. She was one of those beings
who are at once weak and horrible, and who make those shudder whom they
do not cause to weep.
Marius had risen, and was gazing with a species of stupor at this
being, who almost resembled the shadows that traverse dreams. What was
most crushing of all was, that this girl had not come into the world to
be ugly, and in her childhood she must even have been pretty. The grace
of youth was still struggling with the hideous and premature senility
of debauchery and poverty. A remnant of beauty was expiring on this
countenance of sixteen, like the pallid sun which dies out under the
frightful clouds on the dawn of a winter's day. This face was not
absolutely strange to Marius, and he fancied that he had already seen
it somewhere.
"What do you want, miss?" he asked.
The girl replied, with her drunken galley-slave's voice,--
"It is a letter for you, Monsieur Marius."
She addressed him by name, and hence he could not doubt but that she
had business with him; but who was this girl, and how did she know
his name? Without waiting for any authority, she walked in, walked in
boldly, looking around her with a sort of assurance that contracted the
heart, at the whole room and the unmade bed. Her feet were bare, and
large holes in her petticoat displayed her long legs and thin knees.
She was shivering, and held in her hand a letter, which she offered
to Marius. On opening the letter, he noticed that the large, clumsy
wafer was still damp, which proved that the missive had not come a long
distance, and he read:--
"MY AMIABLE NEIGHBOR AND YOUNG SIR,--I have herd of your kindness to
me, and that you paid my half-year's rent six months ago. I bless you
for it, young sir. My eldest daughter will tell you that we have been
without a morsel of bread for two days,--four persons, and my wife ill.
If I am not deseived in my opinion, I dare to hope that your generous
heart will be affected by this statement, and will subject you to the
desire to be propicious to me, by daining to lavish on me a trifling
charity,
"I am, with the distinguished consideration which is due to the
benefactors of humanity,
"JONDRETTE.
"P. S. My daughter will wait for your orders, my dear Monsieur Marius."
This letter, in the midst of the obscure adventure which had been
troubling Marius since the previous evening, was like a candle in a
cellar; all was suddenly lit up. This letter came from where the other
letters came. It was the same handwriting, the same style, the same
orthography, the same paper, and the same tobacco smell. They were
five letters, five stories, five names, five signatures, and only one
writer. The Spanish captain Don Alvarez, the unhappy mother Balizard,
the dramatic author Genflot, and the old comedian Fabantou, were all
four Jondrette, if, indeed, Jondrette's name were really Jondrette.
During the lengthened period that Marius had lived in this house, he
had, as we stated, but rare occasions to see, or even catch a glimpse
of, his very low neighbors; His mind was elsewhere, and where the mind
is there is the eye. He must have passed the Jondrettes more than
once in the passage and on the stairs, but they were to him merely
shadows. He had paid so little attention to them, that on the previous
evening he had run against the Jondrette girls on the boulevard without
recognizing them, for it was evidently they, and it was with great
difficulty that the girl, who had just entered the room, aroused
in him, through disgust and pity, a vague fancy that he had met her
somewhere before.
Now he saw everything clearly. He comprehended that his neighbor
Jondrette had hit upon the trade in his distress of working upon the
charity of benevolent persons, that he procured addresses and wrote
under supposititious names, to people whom he supposed to be rich and
charitable, letters which his children delivered at their risk and
peril, for this father had attained such a stage that he hazarded
his daughters; he was gambling with destiny and staked them. Marius
comprehended that, in all probability, judging from their flight of the
previous evening, their panting, their terror, and the slang words he
overheard, these unfortunates carried on some other dark trades, and
the result of all this was, in the heart of human society such as it is
constituted, two wretched beings, who were neither children, nor girls,
nor women, but a species of impure and innocent monsters, which were
the produce of wretchedness; melancholy beings without age, name, or
sex, to whom neither good nor evil is any longer possible, and who, on
emerging from childhood, have nothing left in the world, not liberty,
nor virtue, nor responsibility; souls that expanded yesterday and are
faded to-day, like the flowers which have fallen in the street and are
plashed by the mud while waiting till a wheel crushes them.
While Marius was bending on the young girl an astonished and painful
glance, she was walking about the garret with the boldness of a
spectre, and without troubling herself in the slightest about her
state of nudity. At some moments her unfastened and torn chemise fell
almost to her waist. She moved the chairs about, disturbed the toilette
articles on the chest of drawers, felt Marius's clothes, and rummaged
in every corner.
"Why," she said, "you have a looking-glass!"
And she hummed, as if she had been alone, bits of vaudeville songs and
wild choruses, which her guttural and hoarse voice rendered mournful.
But beneath this boldness there was something constrained, alarmed, and
humiliated, for effrontery is a disgrace. Nothing could well be more
sad than to see her fluttering about the room with the movement of a
broken-winged bird startled by a dog. It was palpable that with other
conditions of education and destiny, the gay and free demeanor of this
girl might have been something gentle and charming. Among animals, the
creature born to be a dove is never changed into an osprey; that is
only possible with men. Marius was thinking, and left her alone, and
she walked up to the table.
"Ah!" she said, "books."
A gleam darted from her glassy eye: she continued, and her accent
expressed the attitude of being able to boast of something to which no
human creature is insensible,--
"I know how to read."
She quickly seized the book lying on the table, and read rather
fluently,--
"General Bauduin received orders to carry with the five battalions of
his brigade the Château of Hougomont, which is in the centre of the
plain of Waterloo--"
She broke off.
"Ah, Waterloo, I know all about that. It was a battle in which my
father was engaged, for he served in the army. We are thorough
Bonapartists, we are. Waterloo was fought against the English."
She laid down the book, took up a pen, and exclaimed, "And I can write,
too."
She dipped the pen in the ink, and turned to Marius, saying,--
"Would you like a proof? Stay, I will write a line to show you."
And ere he had time to answer she wrote on a sheet of white paper in
the middle of the table, "_Here are the slops_." Then throwing down the
pen, she added,--
"There are no errors in spelling, as you can see, for my sister and I
were well educated. We have not always been what we are now, we were
not made--"
Here she stopped, fixed her glassy eye on Marius, and burst into a
laugh, as she said, with an intonation which contained every possible
agony, blended with every possible cynicism,--
"Bah!"
And then she began humming these words, to a lively air,--
"J'ai faim, mon père,
Pas de fricot.
J'ai froid, ma mère,
Pas de tricot.
Grelotte,
Lolotte!
Sanglote,
Jacquot!"
She had scarce completed this verse, ere she exclaimed,--
"Do you ever go to the play, Monsieur Marius? I do so. I have a brother
who is a friend of the actors, and gives me tickets every now and then.
I don't care for the gallery much, though, for you are so squeezed up;
at times too there are noisy people there, and others who smell bad."
Then she stared at Marius, gave him a strange look, and said to him,--
"Do you know, M. Marius, that you are a very good-looking fellow!"
And at the same moment the same thought occurred to both, which made
her smile and him blush. She walked up to him, and laid a hand upon
his shoulder,--"You don't pay any attention to me, but I know you,
M. Marius. I meet you here on the staircase, and then I see you go
into the house of the one called Father Mabœuf, who lives over at
Austerlitz, sometimes when I go that way. Your curly hair becomes you
very well."
Her voice tried to be very soft, and only succeeded in being very low;
a part of her words was lost in the passage from the larynx to the
lips, as on a piano-forte some keys of which are broken. Marius had
gently recoiled.
"I have a packet," he said, with his cold gravity, "which, I believe,
belongs to you. Allow me to deliver it to you."
And he handed her the envelope which contained the four letters; she
clapped her hands and said,--
"We looked for it everywhere."
Then she quickly seized the parcel and undid the envelope, while
saying,--
"Lord of Lords! how my sister and I did look for it! And so you found
it,--on the boulevard, did you not? It must have been there. You see,
it was dropped while we were running, and it was my brat of a sister
who was such an ass. When we got home we could not find it, and as we
did not wish to be beaten,--which is unnecessary, which is entirely
unnecessary, which is absolutely unnecessary,--we said at home that
we had delivered the letters, and that the answer was Nix! And here
are the poor letters! Well, and how did you know that they were mine?
Ob, yes, by the writing. So, then, it was you that we ran against last
night? We could not see anything, and I said to my sister, 'Is it a
gentleman?' and she answered, 'Yes, I think it is a gentleman.'"
While saying this she had unfolded the petition addressed "To the
Benevolent gentleman of the church of St. Jacques du Haut-pas."
"Hilloh!" she said, "this is the one for the old swell who goes to
Mass. Why, 't is just the hour, and I will carry it to him. He will
perhaps give us something for breakfast."
Then she burst into a laugh, and added,--
"Do you know what it will be if we breakfast to-day? We shall have our
breakfast of the day before yesterday, our dinner of the day before
yesterday, our breakfast of yesterday, our dinner of yesterday, all at
once this morning. Well, hang it all! if you are not satisfied, rot,
dogs!"
This reminded Marius of what the hapless girl had come to get from
him; he fumbled in his waistcoat, but found nothing. The girl went on,
and seemed speaking as if no longer conscious of the presence of Marius.
"Sometimes I go out at night. Sometimes I do not come home. Before we
came here last winter we lived under the arches of the bridges, and
kept close together not to be frozen. My little sister cried. How sad
the water is! When I thought of drowning myself, I said, 'No, it is
too cold,' I go about all alone when I like, and sleep at times in
ditches. Do you know, at night, when I walk along the boulevard, I see
trees like forks, I see black houses as tall as the towers of Notre
Dame, I fancy that the white walls are the river, and I say to myself,
'Why, there is water!' The stars are like illumination lamps, and you
might say that they smoke, and the wind puts them out I feel stunned,
as if my hair was lashing my ears; however the night may be, I hear
barrel-organs and spinning machinery, but what do I know? I fancy that
stones are being thrown at me, and I run away unconsciously, for all
turns round me. When you have not eaten it is funny."
And she gazed at him with haggard eyes.
After feeling in the depths of all his pockets, Marius succeeded in
getting together five francs sixteen sous; it was at this moment
all that he possessed in the world. "Here is my to-days dinner," he
thought, "and to-morrow will take care of itself." He kept the sixteen
sous, and gave the girl the five-franc piece, which she eagerly
clutched.
"Good!" she said, "there is sunshine."
And, as if the sunshine had the property of melting in her brain
avalanches of slang, she went on,--
"Five francs! a shiner! a monarch! in this crib! that's stunning! Well,
you 're a nice kid, and I do the humble to you. Two days' drink and a
bully feed,--a feast; we 're well fixed. Hurrah, pals!"
She pulled her chemise up over her shoulders, gave Marius a deep
courtesy and a familiar wave of the hand, and walked toward the door,
saying,--
"Good day, sir; but no matter, I'll go and find my old swell."
As she passed she noticed on the drawers an old crust of dry bread
mouldering in the dust; she caught it up, and bit into it savagely,
grumbling,--
"It is good, it is hard; it breaks my teeth!"
Then she left the room.