1817 is the year which Louis XVIII., with a certain royal coolness

which was not deficient in pride, entitled the twenty-second of his

reign. It is the year in which M. Bruguière de Sorsum was celebrated.

All the wig-makers' shops, hoping for powder and the return of the

royal bird, were covered with azure and fleurs de lys. It was the

candid time when Count Lynch sat every Sunday as churchwarden at St.

Germain-des-Près in the coat of a peer of France, with his red ribbon,

his long nose, and that majestic profile peculiar to a man who has done

a brilliant deed. The brilliant deed done by M. Lynch was having, when

Mayor of Bordeaux, surrendered the town rather prematurely on March

12, 1814, to the Duc d'Angoulême; hence his peerage. In 1817 fashion

buried little boys of the age of six and seven beneath vast morocco

leather caps with earflaps, much resembling Esquimaux fur-bonnets. The

French army was dressed in white, like the Austrian; the regiments

were called Legions, and bore the names of the departments instead of

numbers. Napoleon was at St Helena, and as England refused him green

cloth he had his old coats turned. In 1817 Pellegrini sang, and Mlle.

Bigottini danced, Potier reigned, and Odry was not as yet. Madame Saqui

succeeded Forioso. There were still Prussians in France. M. Delalot

was a personage. Legitimacy had just strengthened itself by cutting

off the hand and then the head of Pleignier, Carbonneau, and Tolleron.

Prince de Talleyrand, Lord High Chamberlain, and the Abbé Louis,

Minister Designate of Finance, looked at each other with the laugh

of two augurs. Both had celebrated on July 14, 1790, the Mass of the

confederation in the Champ de Mars. Talleyrand had read it as bishop,

Louis had served it as deacon. In 1817, in the side walks of the same

Champ de Mars, could be seen large wooden cylinders, lying in the wet

and rotting in the grass, painted blue, with traces of eagles and bees

which had lost their gilding. These were the columns which two years

previously supported the Emperor's balcony at the Champ de Mai. They

were partly blackened by the bivouac fires of the Austrians encamped

near Gros Caillou, and two or three of the columns had disappeared in

the bivouac fires, and warmed the coarse hands of the Kaiserlichs.

The Champ de Mai had this remarkable thing about it, that it was held

in the month of June, and on the Champ de Mars. In this year, 1817,

two things were popular,--the Voltaire Touquet and the snuff-box _à

la charte_. The latest Parisian sensation was the crime of Dautun,

who threw his brother's head into the basin on the Flower Market.

People were beginning to grow anxious at the Admiralty that no news

arrived about that fatal frigate _la Méduse_, which was destined to

cover Chaumareix with shame and Géricault with glory. Colonel Selves

proceeded to Egypt to become Soliman Pacha there. The palace of the

Thermes, in the Rue de la Harpe, served as a shop for a cooper. On the

platform of the octagonal tower of the Hotel de Cluny, could still be

seen the little wooden house, which had served as an observatory for

Messier, astronomer to the Admiralty under Louis XVI. The Duchesse de

Duras was reading to three or four friends in her boudoir furnished

with sky-blue satin X's, her unpublished romance of _Ourika_. The N's

were scratched off the Louvre. The Austerlitz bridge was forsworn,

and called the Kings' Gardens' bridge,--a double enigma which at once

disguised the Austerlitz bridge and the Jardin des Plantes. Louis

XVIII., while annotating Horace with his nail, was troubled by heroes

who make themselves emperors and cobblers who make themselves dauphins;

he had two objects of anxiety,--Napoleon and Mathurin Bruneau. The

French Academy offered as subject for the prize essay the happiness

produced by study. M. Billart was officially eloquent; and in his

shadow could be seen growing up that future Advocate-General de Broë,

promised to the sarcasms of Paul Louis Courier. There was a false

Châteaubriand called Marchangy, while waiting till there should be a

false Marchangy, called d'Arlincourt. "Claire d'Albe" and "Malek-Adel"

were master-pieces; and Madame Cottin was declared the first writer of

the age. The Institute erased from its lists the Academician Napoleon

Bonaparte. A royal decree constituted Angoulême a naval school, for,

as the Duc d'Angoulême was Lord High Admiral, it was evident that

the city from which he derived his title possessed _de jure_ all the

qualifications of a seaport; if not, the monarchical principle would

be encroached on. In the cabinet-council the question was discussed

whether the wood-cuts representing tumblers, which seasoned Franconi's

bills and caused the street scamps to congregate, should be tolerated.

M. Paër, author of l'Agnese, a square-faced man with a carbuncle on his

chin, directed the private concerts of the Marchioness de Sassenaye

in the Rue de la Ville'd'Evêque. All the young ladies were singing,

"L'ermite de Saint Avelle," words by Edmond Géraud. The Yellow Dwarf

was transformed into the Mirror. The Café Lemblin stood up for the

Emperor against the Café Valois, which supported the Bourbons. The

Duc de Berry, whom Louvel was already gazing at from the darkness,

had just been married to a princess of Sicily. It was a year since

Madame de Staël had died. The Life Guards hissed Mademoiselle Mars.

The large papers were all small; their size was limited, but the

liberty was great. The _Constitutionnel_ was constitutional, and the

_Minerva_ called Châteaubriand, Châteaubriant; this _t_ made the

city laugh heartily, at the expense of the great writer. Prostituted

journalists insulted in sold journals the proscripts of 1815. David

had no longer talent, Arnault wit, Carnot probity. Soult never had won

a battle. It is true that Napoleon no longer had genius. Everybody

knows that it is rare for letters sent by post to reach an exile, for

the police make it a religious duty to intercept them. The fact is

not new, for Descartes when banished complained of it. David having

displayed some temper in a Belgian paper at not receiving letters

written to him, this appeared very amusing to the Royalist journals,

which ridiculed the proscribed man. The use of the words regicides

or voters, enemies or allies, Napoleon or Buonaparte, separated two

men more than an abyss. All persons of common sense were agreed

that the era of revolutions was eternally closed by Louis XVIII.,

surnamed "the immortal author of the Charter." On the platform of the

Pont Neuf the word "Redivivus" was carved on the pedestal which was

awaiting the statue of Henri IV. M. Piet was excogitating at No. 4

Rue Thérèse his council to consolidate the monarchy. The leaders of

the Right said in grave complications, "Bacot must be written to."

Messieurs Canuel, O'Mahony, and de Chappedelaine, were sketching

under the covert approval of Monsieur what was destined to be at a

later date "the conspiracy du Bord de l'eau." The "Black Pin" was

plotting on its side. Delaverderie was coming to an understanding

with Trogoff. M. Decazes, a rather liberally-minded man, was in the

ascendant. Châteaubriand, standing each morning at his No. 27 Rue

Saint Dominique, in trousers and slippers, with his gray hair fastened

by a handkerchief, with his eyes fixed on a mirror, and a case of

dentist's instruments open before him,--was cleaning his teeth, which

were splendid, while dictating "the Monarchy according to the Charter"

to M. Pilorge, his secretary. Authoritative critics preferred Lafon

to Talma. M. de Feletz signed A; M. Hoffman signed Z. Charles Nodier

was writing "Thérèse Aubert." Divorce was abolished. The lyceums were

called colleges. The collegians, with a gold fleur de lys on their

collar, were fighting about the King of Rome. The counter-police of

the Château denounced to her Royal Highness Madame, the universally

exposed portrait of the Duc d'Orléans, who looked much handsomer in his

uniform of Colonel General of Hussars than the Duc de Berry did in his

uniform as Colonel General of Dragoons, which was a serious annoyance.

The city of Paris was having the dome of the Invalides regilt at its

own cost. Serious-minded men asked themselves what M. de Trinquelague

would do in such and such a case. M. Clausel de Montais diverged on

certain points from M. Clausel de Coussergues; M. de Salaberry was

not satisfied. Picard the comedian, who belonged to the Academy of

which Molière was not a member, was playing the two Philiberts at the

Odéon, on the façade of which could still be distinctly read: THÉÂTRE

DE L'IMPÉRATRICE, although the letters had been torn down. People were

taking sides for or against Cugnet de Montarlot. Fabvier was factious;

Bavoux was revolutionary; Pelicier the publisher brought out an edition

of Voltaire with the title "The Works of Voltaire, of the Académie

Française." "That catches purchasers," the simple publisher said. It

was the general opinion that M. Charles Loyson would be the genius of

the age; envy was beginning to snap at him, which is a sign of glory,

and the following line was written about him.

"Même quand Loyson vole, on sent qu'il a des pattes."

As Cardinal Fesch refused to resign, M. de Pins, Archbishop of Amasia,

was administering the diocese of Lyons. The quarrel about the Dappes

valley began between Switzerland and France, through a memorial of

Captain Dufour, who has since become a general. Saint Simon, utterly

ignored, was building up his sublime dream. There were in the Academy

of Sciences a celebrated Fourier whom posterity has forgotten, and in

some obscure garret a Fourier whom the future will remember. Lord Byron

was beginning to culminate; a note to a poem of Millevoye's announced

him to France in these terms, "un certain Lord Baron." David d'Angers

was trying to mould marble. The Abbé Caron spoke in terms of praise

to a select audience in the Alley of the Feuillantines of an unknown

priest called Félicité Robert, who was at a later date Lamennais.

A thing that smoked and plashed on the Seine with the noise of a

swimming dog, went under the Tuileries windows from the Pont Royal

to the Pont Louis XV.; it was a mechanism not worth much, a sort of

plaything, a reverie of a dreamy inventor, an Utopia: a steamboat.

The Parisians looked at this useless thing with indifference. M. de

Vaublanc, reformer of the Institute by coup d'état, and distinguished

author of several academicians, after making them, could not succeed

in becoming one himself. The Faubourg St Germain and the Pavilion

Marson desired to have M. Delvau as Prefect of police on account of

his devotion. Dupuytren and Récamier quarrelled in the theatre of the

School of Medicine, and were going to fight about the divinity of the

Saviour. Cuvier, with one eye on Genesis and the other on nature, was

striving to please the bigoted reaction by placing forms in harmony

with texts, and letting Moses be flattered by the Mastodons. M.

François de Neufchâteau, the praiseworthy cultivator of the memory of

Parmentier, was making a thousand efforts to have "pommes de terre"

pronounced "parmentière," but did not succeed. The Abbé Grégoire,

ex-bishop, ex-conventionalist, and ex-senator, had reached in the royal

polemics the state of the "infamous Grégoire," which was denounced as a

neologism by M. Royer-Collard. In the third arch of the Pont de Jéna,

the new stone could still be distinguished through its whiteness, with

which two years previously the mine formed by Blucher to blow up the

bridge was stopped up. Justice summoned to her bar a man who, on seeing

the Comte d'Artois enter Notre Dame, said aloud: "Sapristi! I regret

the days when I saw Napoleon and Talma enter the Bal Sauvage arm in

arm," seditious remarks punished with six months' imprisonment.

Traitors displayed themselves unblushingly; some, who had passed over

to the enemy on the eve of a battle, did not conceal their reward,

but walked immodestly in the sunshine with the cynicism of wealth and

dignities; the deserters at Ligny and Quatre Bras, well rewarded for

their turpitude, openly displayed their monarchical devotion.

Such are a few recollections of the year 1817, which is now forgotten.

History neglects nearly all these details, and cannot do otherwise,

as the infinity would crush it. Still these details, wrongly called

little,--there are no little facts in humanity or little leaves in

vegetation,--are useful, for the face of ages is composed of the

physiognomy of years.

In this year 1817 four young Parisians played a capital joke.

CHAPTER II.

A DOUBLE QUARTETTE.

These Parisians came, one from Toulouse, the second from Limoges, the

third from Cahors, the fourth from Montauban, but they were students,

and thus Parisians; for studying in Paris is being born in Paris. These

young men were insignificant, four every-day specimens, neither good

nor bad, wise nor ignorant, geniuses nor idiots, and handsome with

that charming Aprilia which is called twenty years. They were four

Oscars, for at that period Arthurs did not yet exist. "Burn for him the

perfumes of Arabia," the romance said; "Oscar is advancing, I am about

to see him." People had just emerged from Ossian: the elegant world

was Scandinavian and Caledonian, the English style was not destined to

prevail till a later date, and the first of the Arthurs, Wellington,

had only just won the battle of Waterloo.

The names of these Oscars were Félix Tholomyès, of Toulouse; Listolier,

of Cahors; Fameuil, of Limoges; and Blachevelle, of Montauban. Of

course each had a mistress; Blachevelle loved Favourite, so called

because she had been to England; Listolier adored Dahlia, who had taken

the name of a flower for her _nom de guerre_; Fameuil idolized Zéphine,

an abridgment of Josephine; while Tholomyès had Fantine, called the

Blonde, owing to her magnificent suncolored hair. Favourite, Dahlia,

Zéphine, and Fantine were four exquisitely pretty girls, still to some

extent workwomen. They had not entirely laid down the needle, and

though unsettled by their amourettes, they still had in their faces

a remnant of the serenity of toil, and in their souls that flower of

honesty, which in a woman survives the first fall. One of the four was

called the young one, because she was the youngest, and one called the

old one, who was only three-and-twenty. To conceal nothing, the three

first were more experienced, more reckless, and had flown further into

the noise of life than Fantine the Blonde, who was still occupied with

her first illusion.

Dahlia, Zéphine, and especially Favourite, could not have said the

same. There was already more than one episode in their scarce-begun

romance, and the lover who was called Adolphe in the first chapter,

became Alphonse in the second, and Gustave in the third. Poverty

and coquettishness are two fatal counsellors: one scolds, the other

flatters, and the poor girls of the lower classes have them whispering

in both ears. Badly-guarded souls listen, and hence come the falls they

make, and the stones hurled at them. They are crushed with the splendor

of all that is immaculate and inaccessible. Alas! what if the Jungfrau

had hunger? Favourite, who had been to England, was admired by Zéphine

and Dahlia. She had a home of her own from an early age. Her father

was an old brutal and boasting professor of mathematics, unmarried,

and still giving lessons in spite of his age. This professor, when a

young man, had one day seen a lady's maid's gown caught in a fender;

he fell in love with this accident, and Favourite was the result. She

met her father from time to time, and he bowed to her. One morning, an

old woman with a hypocritical look came into her room and said, "Do you

not know me, Miss?" "No." "I am your mother." Then the old woman opened

the cupboard, ate and drank, sent for a mattress she had, and installed

herself. This mother, who was grumbling and proud, never spoke to

Favourite, sat for hours without saying a word, breakfasted, dined, and

supped for half a dozen, and spent her evenings in the porter's lodge,

where she abused her daughter. What drew Dahlia toward Listolier,

towards others perhaps, towards idleness, was having too pretty pink

nails. How could she employ such nails in working? A girl who wishes to

remain virtuous must not have pity on her hands. As for Zéphine, she

had conquered Fameuil by her little saucy and coaxing way of saying

"Yes, Sir." The young men were comrades, the girls friends. Such amours

are always doubled by such friendships.

A sage and a philosopher are two persons; and what proves it is that,

after making all reservations for these little irregular households,

Favourite, Zéphine, and Dahlia were philosophic girls, and Fantine a

prudent girl. Prudent, it will be said, and Tholomyès? Solomon would

reply, that love forms part of wisdom. We confine ourselves to saying

that Fantine's love was a first love, a single love, a faithful love.

She was the only one of the four who was addressed familiarly by one

man alone.

Fantine was one of those beings who spring up from the dregs of the

people; issuing from the lowest depths of the social darkness, she had

on her forehead the stamp of the anonymous and the unknown. She was

born at M. sur M.; of what parents, who could say? She had never known

either father or mother. She called herself Fantine, and why Fantine?

She was never known by any other name. At the period of her birth, the

Directory was still in existence. She had no family name, as she had

no family; and no Christian name, as the Church was abolished. She

accepted the name given her by the first passer-by, who saw her running

barefooted about the streets. She was called little Fantine, and no one

knew any more. This human creature came into the world in that way.

At the age of ten, Fantine left the town, and went into service with

farmers in the neighborhood. At the age of fifteen she went to Paris,

"to seek her fortune." Fantine was pretty and remained pure as long as

she could. She was a charming blonde, with handsome teeth; she had gold

and pearls for her dower, but the gold was on her head, and the pearls

in her mouth.

She worked for a livelihood; and then she loved, still for the sake

of living, for the heart is hungry too. She loved Tholomyès; it

was a pastime for him, but a passion with her. The streets of the

Quartier Latin, which are thronged with students and grisettes, saw

the beginning of this dream. Fantine, in the labyrinth of the Pantheon

Hill, where so many adventures are fastened and unfastened, long

shunned Tholomyès, but in such a way as to meet him constantly. There

is a manner of avoiding which resembles seeking,--in a word, the

eclogue was played.

Blachevelle, Listolier, and Fameuil formed a sort of group, of which

Tholomyès was the head, for it was he who had the wit. Tholomyès was

the antique old student; he was rich, for he had an income of 4000

francs a year, a splendid scandal on the Montagne St. Geneviève.

Tholomyès was a man of the world, thirty years of age, and in a bad

state of preservation. He was wrinkled and had lost teeth, and he had

an incipient baldness, of which he himself said without sorrow: "The

skull at thirty, the knee at forty." He had but a poor digestion, and

one of his eyes was permanently watery. But in proportion as his youth

was extinguished, his gayety became brighter; he substituted jests for

his teeth, joy for his hair, irony for his health, and his weeping eye

laughed incessantly. He was battered, but still flowering. His youth

had beaten an orderly retreat, and only the fire was visible. He had

had a piece refused at the Vaudeville Theatre, and wrote occasional

verses now and then. In addition, he doubted everything in a superior

way, which is a great strength in the eyes of the weak. Hence, being

ironical and bald, he was the leader. We wonder whether irony, is

derived from the English word "iron"? One day Tholomyès took the other

three aside, made an oracular gesture, and said,--

"It is nearly a year that Fantine, Dahlia, Zéphine, and Favorite have

been asking us to give them a surprise, and we promised solemnly to do

so. They are always talking about it, especially to me. In the same

way as the old women of Naples cry to Saint Januarius, "Yellow face,

perform your miracle!" our beauties incessantly say to me, "Tholomyès,

when will you be delivered of your surprise?" At the same time our

parents are writing to us, so let us kill two birds with one stone. The

moment appears to me to have arrived, so let us talk it over."

Upon this, Tholomyès lowered his voice, and mysteriously uttered

something so amusing that a mighty and enthusiastic laugh burst from

four mouths simultaneously, and Blacheville exclaimed "That is an

idea!" An _estaminet_ full of smoke presenting itself, they went in,

and the remainder of their conference was lost in the tobacco clouds.

The result of the gloom was a brilliant pleasure excursion, that took

place on the following Sunday, to which the four young men invited the

girls.

CHAPTER III.

FOUR TO FOUR.

It is difficult to form an idea at the present day of what a pleasure

party of students and grisettes was four-and-forty years ago. Paris

has no longer the same environs; the face of what may be termed

circum-Parisian life has completely changed during half a century;

where there was the old-fashioned coach, there is a railway-carriage;

where there was the fly-boat, there is now the steamer; people talk of

Fécamp as people did in those days of St. Cloud. Paris of 1862 is a

city which has France for its suburbs.

The four couples conscientiously accomplished all the rustic follies

possible at that day. It was a bright warm summer day; they rose at

five o'clock; then they went to St. Cloud in the stage-coach, looked

at the dry cascade, and exclaimed, "That must be grand when there is

water;" breakfasted at the Tête Noire, where Castaing had not yet put

up, ran at the ring in the Quincunx of the great basin, ascended into

the Diogenes lantern, gambled for macaroons at the roulette board

by the Sêvres bridge, culled posies at Puteaux, bought reed-pipes

at Neuilly, ate apple tarts everywhere, and were perfectly happy.

The girls prattled and chattered like escaped linnets; they were

quite wild, and every now and then gave the young men little taps.

Oh, youthful intoxication of life! adorable years! the wing of the

dragon-fly rustles. Oh, whoever you may be, do you remember? have you

ever walked in the woods, removing the branches for the sake of the

pretty head that comes behind you? have you laughingly stepped on a

damp slope, with a beloved woman who holds your hand, and cries, "Oh,

my boots, what a state they are in!" Let us say at once, that the merry

annoyance of a shower was spared the happy party, although Favourite

had said on starting, with a magisterial and maternal air, "The slugs

are walking about the paths; that is a sign of rain, children."

All four were pretty madcaps. A good old classic poet, then renowned,

M. le Chevalier de Labouisse, a worthy man who had an Eléanore,

wandering that day under the chestnut-trees of St. Cloud, saw them pass

at about ten in the morning, and exclaimed, "There is one too many,"

thinking of the Graces. Favourite, the girl who was three-and-twenty

and the old one, ran in front under the large green branches, leaped

over ditches, strode madly across bushes, and presided over the gayety

with the spirit of a young fawn. Zéphine and Dahlia, whom accident

had created as a couple necessary to enhance each other's beauty by

contrast, did not separate, though more through a coquettish instinct

than through friendship, and leaning on one another, assumed English

attitudes; the first "Keepsakes" had just come out, melancholy was

culminating for women, as Byronism did at a later date for men, and the

hair of the tender sex was beginning to become dishevelled. Zéphine and

Dahlia had their hair in rolls. Listolier and Fameuil, who were engaged

in a discussion about their professors, were explaining to Fantine

the difference there was between M. Delvincourt and M. Blondeau.

Blachevelle seemed to have been created expressly to carry Favourite's

faded shabby shawl on Sundays.

Tholomyès came last; he was very gay, but there was something

commanding in his joviality; his principal ornament was nankeen

trousers, cut in the shape of elephant's legs, with leathern straps; he

had a mighty rattan worth 200 francs in his hand, and, as he was quite

reckless, a strange thing called a cigar in his mouth; nothing being

sacred to him, he smoked. "That Tholomyès is astounding," the others

were wont to say with veneration. "What trousers! what energy!"

As for Fantine she was the personification of joy. Her splendid teeth

had evidently been made for laughter by nature. She carried in her

hand, more willingly than on her head, her little straw bonnet, with

its long streamers. Her thick, light hair, inclined to float, and which

had to be done up continually, seemed made for the flight of Galatea

under the willows. Her rosy lips prattled enchantingly; the corners

of her mouth voluptuously raised, as in the antique masks of Erigone,

seemed to encourage boldness; but her long eyelashes, full of shade,

were discreetly lowered upon the seductiveness of the lower part of

the face, as if to command respect. Her whole toilet had something of

song and sunshine about it; she had on a dress of mauve barége, little

buskin slippers, whose strings formed an X on her fine, open-worked

stockings, and that sort of muslin spencer, a Marseillais invention,

whose name of canezou, a corrupted pronunciation of _quinze Août_ at

the Cannebière, signifies fine weather and heat. The three others,

who were less timid, as we said, bravely wore low-necked dresses,

which in summer are very graceful and attractive, under bonnets

covered with flowers; but by the side of this bold dress, Fantine's

canezou, with its transparency, indiscretion, and reticences, at once

concealing and displaying, seemed a provocative invention of decency;

and the famous Court of Love, presided over by the Vicomtesse de Cette

with the sea-green eyes, would have probably bestowed the prize for

coquettishness on this canezou, which competed for that of chastity.

The simplest things are frequently the cleverest.

Dazzling from a front view, delicate from a side view, with dark

blue eyes, heavy eye-lids, arched and small feet, wrists and ankles

admirably set on, the white skin displaying here and there the azure

arborescences of the veins, with a childish fresh cheek, the robust

neck of the Æginetan Juno shoulders, apparently modelled by Couston,

and having in their centre a voluptuous dimple, visible through the

muslin; a gayety tempered by reverie; a sculptural and exquisite

being,--such was Fantine; you could trace beneath the ribbons and

finery a statue, and inside the statue a soul. Fantine was beautiful,

without being exactly conscious of it. Those rare dreamers, the

mysterious priests of the beautiful, who silently confront everything

with perfection, would have seen in this little work-girl the ancient

sacred euphony, through the transparency of Parisian grace! This girl

had blood in her, and had those two descriptions of beauty which are

the style and the rhythm. The style is the form of the ideal; the

rhythm is its movement.

We have said that Fantine was joy itself; she was also modesty.

Any one who watched her closely would have seen through all this

intoxication of youth, the season, and love, an invincible expression

of restraint and modesty. She remained slightly astonished, and this

chaste astonishment distinguishes Psyche from Venus. Fantine had the

long white delicate fingers of the Vestal, who stirs up the sacred fire

with a golden bodkin. Though she had refused nothing, as we shall soon

see, to Tholomyès, her face, when in repose, was supremely virginal;

a species of stern and almost austere dignity suddenly invaded it

at certain hours, and nothing was so singular and affecting as to

see gayety so rapidly extinguished on it, and contemplation succeed

cheerfulness without any transition. This sudden gravity, which was at

times sternly marked, resembled the disdain of a goddess. Her forehead,

nose, and chin offered that equilibrium of outline which is very

distinct from the equilibrium of proportion, and produces the harmony

of the face; in the characteristic space between the base of the nose

and the upper lip, she had that imperceptible and charming curve, that

mysterious sign of chastity, which made Barbarossa fall in love with

a Diana found in the ruins of Iconium. Love is a fault; be it so; but

Fantine was innocence floating on the surface of the fault.

CHAPTER IV.

THOLOMYÈS SINGS A SPANISH SONG.

The whole of this day seemed to be composed of dawn; all nature seemed

to be having a holiday, and laughing. The pastures of St. Cloud exhaled

perfumes; the breeze from the Seine vaguely stirred the leaves; the

branches gesticulated in the wind; the bees were plundering the

jessamine; a madcap swarm of butterflies settled down on the ragwort,

the clover, and the wild oats; there was in the august park of the

King of France a pack of vagabonds, the birds. The four happy couples

enjoyed the sun, the fields, the flowers, and the trees. And in this

community of Paradise, the girls, singing, talking, dancing, chasing

butterflies, picking bind-weed, wetting their stockings in the tall

grass, fresh, madcap, not bad, all received kisses from all the men,

every now and then, save Fantine, enveloped in her vague resistance,

dreamy and shy, and who was in love. "You always look strange,"

Favourite said to her.

Such passings-by of happy couples are a profound appeal to life and

nature, and bring caresses and light out of everything. Once upon

a time there was a fairy, who made fields and trees expressly for

lovers; hence the eternal hedge-school of lovers, which incessantly

recommences, and will last so long as there are bushes and scholars.

Hence the popularity of spring among thinkers; the patrician and the

knifegrinder, the duke and the limb of the law, people of the court and

people of the city, as they were called formerly, are all subjects of

this fairy. People laugh and seek each other; there is the brilliancy

of an apotheosis in the air, for what a transfiguration is loving!

Notary's clerks are gods. And then the little shrieks, pursuits in the

grass, waists caught hold of, that chattering which is so melodious,

that adoration which breaks out in the way of uttering a word, cherries

torn from lips,--all this is glorious! People believe that it will

never end; philosophers, poets, artists, regard these ecstasies, and

know not what to do, as they are so dazzled by them. The departure for

Cythera! exclaims Watteau; Lancret, the painter of the middle classes,

regards his cits flying away in the blue sky; Diderot stretches out his

arms to all these amourettes, and d'Urfé mixes up Druids with them.

After breakfast the four couples went to see, in what was then called

the King's Square, a plant newly arrived from the Indies, whose name

we have forgotten, but which at that time attracted all Paris to St.

Cloud; it was a strange and pretty shrub, whose numerous branches,

fine as threads and leafless, were covered with a million of small

white flowers giving it the appearance of a head of hair swarming

with flowers; there was always a crowd round it, admiring it. After

inspecting the shrub, Tholomyès exclaimed, "I will pay for donkeys;"

and after making a bargain with the donkey-man, they returned by

Vauvres and Issy. At the latter place an incident occurred; the park,

a national estate held at this time by Bourguin the contractor, was

accidentally open. They passed through the gates, visited the wax

hermit in his grotto, and tried the mysterious effect of the famous

cabinet of mirrors, a lascivious trap, worthy of a satyr who had become

a millionnaire. They bravely pulled the large swing, fastened to the

two chestnut-trees celebrated by the Abbé de Bernis. While swinging

the ladies in turn, which produced, amid general laughter, a flying of

skirts by which Greuze would have profited, the Toulousian Tholomyès,

who was somewhat of a Spaniard, as Toulouse is the cousin of Tolosa,

sang to a melancholy tune the old gallega, which was probably inspired

by the sight of a pretty girl swinging between two trees,--

"Soy tie Badajoz

Amor me llama

Toda mi alma

Es en mis ojos

Porque enseflas

A tus piernas."

Fantine alone declined to swing.

"I do not like people to be so affected," Favourite muttered rather

sharply.

On giving up the donkeys there was fresh pleasure; the Seine was

crossed in a boat, and from Passy they walked to the Barrière de

l'Étoile. They had been afoot since five in the morning; but no matter!

"There is no such thing as weariness on Sunday," said Favourite; "on

Sundays fatigue does not work." At about three o'clock, the four

couples, wild with delight, turned into the Montagnes Busses, a

singular building, which at that time occupied the heights of Beaujon,

and whose winding line could be seen over the trees of the Champs

Élysées. From time to time Favourite exclaimed,--

"Where's the surprise? I insist on the surprise."

"Have patience," Tholomyès answered.

CHAPTER V.

AT BOMBARDA'S.

The Russian mountain exhausted, they thought about dinner, and

the radiant eight, at length somewhat weary, put into the Cabaret

Bombarda, an offshoot established in the Champs Élysées by that famous

restaurateur Bombarda, whose sign could be seen at that time at the Rue

de Rivoli by the side of the Delorme passage.

A large but ugly room, with an alcove and a bed at the end (owing to

the crowded state of the houses on Sundays they were compelled to

put up with it); two windows from which the quay and river could be

contemplated through the elm-trees; a magnificent autumn sun illumining

the windows; two tables, on one of them a triumphal mountain of

bottles, mixed up with hats and bonnets, at the other four couples

joyously seated round a mass of dishes, plates, bottles, and glasses,

pitchers of beer, mingled with wine-bottles; but little order on the

table, and some amount of disorder under it.

"Ils faisaient sous la table

Un bruit, un trique-trac de pieds épouvantable,"

as Molière says. Such was the state of the pastoral which began at

5 A.M.; at half-past 4 P.M. the sun was declining and appetite was

satisfied.

The Champs Élysées, full of sunshine and crowd, were nought but

light and dust, two things of which glory is composed. The horses of

Marly, those neighing marbles, reared amid a golden cloud. Carriages

continually passed along; a squadron of splendid guards, with the

trumpeter at their head, rode down the Neuilly avenue; the white flag,

tinged with pink by the setting sun, floated above the dome of the

Tuileries. The Place de la Concorde, which had again become the Place

Louis XV., was crowded with merry promenaders. Many wore a silver

_fleur de lys_ hanging from a black moiré ribbon, which, in 1817, had

not entirely disappeared from the buttonholes. Here and there, in

the midst of applauding crowds, little girls were singing a royalist

_bourrée,_ very celebrated at that time, intended to crush the hundred

days, and which had a chorus of,--

"Rendez nous notre père de Gand,

Rendez vous notre père."

Heaps of suburbans, dressed in their Sunday clothes, and some wearing

_fleur de lys_ like the cits, were scattered over the squares, playing

at quintain or riding in roundabouts; others were drinking; some who

were printers' apprentices wore paper caps, and their laughter was the

loudest. All was radiant; it was a time of undeniable peace, and of

profound royalist security; it was a period when a private and special

report of Anglès, prefect of police to the King, terminated with these

lines: "All things duly considered, Sire, there is nothing to fear from

these people. They are as careless and indolent as cats, and though the

lower classes in the provinces are stirring, those in Paris are not so.

They are all little men, Sire, and it would take two of them to make

one of your grenadiers. There is nothing to fear from the populace of

the capital. It is remarkable that their height has decreased during

the last fifty years, and the people of the suburbs of Paris are

shorter than they were before the Revolution. They are not dangerous,

and, in a word, are good-tempered _canaille._"

Prefects of police do not believe it possible that a cat can be changed

into a lion; it is so, however, and that is the miracle of the people

of Paris. The cat, so despised by Count Anglès, possessed the esteem

of the old Republics; it was the incarnation of liberty in their eyes,

and as if to serve as a pendant to the Minerva Apteros of the Piræus,

there was on the public square of Corinth a colossal bronze statue of a

cat. The simple police of the restoration had too favorable an opinion

of the people of Paris, and they were not such good-tempered _canaille_

as they were supposed to be. The Parisian is to the French-man what

the Athenian is to the Greek; no one sleeps sounder than he; no one is

more frankly frivolous and idle than he; no one can pretend to forget

so well as he,--but he must not be trusted; he is suited for every

species of nonchalance, but when there is a glory as the result, he

is admirable for every sort of fury. Give him a pike and he will make

August 10; give him a musket, and you will have Austerlitz. He is the

support of Napoleon, and the resource of Danton. If the country is in

danger, he enlists; if liberty is imperilled, he tears up the pavement.

His hair, full of wrath, is epical, his blouse assumes the folds of

a chlamys. Take care; for of the first Rue Grenétat he comes to be

will make Caudine forks. If the hour strikes, this suburban grows, the

little man looks in a terrible manner, his breath becomes a tempest,

and from his weak chest issues a blast strong enough to uproot the

Alps. It was through the Parisian suburban that the Revolution, joined

with armies, conquered Europe. He sings, and that forms his delight;

proportion his song to his nature, and you shall see! So long as he has

no burden but the Carmagnole, he will merely overthrow Louis XVI.; but

make him sing the Marseillaise, and he will deliver the world.

After writing this note on the margin of Count Anglès' report, we will

return to our four couples. The dinner, as we said, was drawing to a

close.

CHAPTER VI.

IN WHICH PEOPLE ADORE EACH OTHER.

Love talk and table talk are equally indescribable, for the first is

a cloud, the second smoke. Fantine and Dahlia were humming a tune,

Tholomyès was drinking, Zéphine laughing, Fantine smiling, Listolier

was blowing a penny trumpet bought at St. Cloud, Favourite was looking

tenderly at Blachevelle and saying,--

"Blachevelle, I adore you."

This led to Blachevelle asking,--

"What would you do, Favourite, if I ceased to love you?"

"I?" Favourite exclaimed, "oh, do not say that, even in fun! If you

ceased to love me I would run after you, claw you, throw water over

you, and have you arrested."

Blachevelle smiled with the voluptuous fatuity of a man whose

self-esteem is tickled. Dahlia, while still eating, whispered to

Favourite through the noise,--

"You seem to be very fond of your Blachevelle?"

"I detest him," Favourite answered in the same key, as she seized her

fork again. "He is miserly, and I prefer the little fellow who lives

opposite to me. He is a very good-looking young man; do you know him?

It is easy to see that he wants to be an actor, and I am fond of

actors. So soon as he comes in, his mother says,--'Oh, good heavens!

my tranquillity is destroyed: he is going to begin to shout; my dear

boy, you give me a headache;' because he goes about the house, into the

garrets as high as he can get, and sings and declaims, so that he can

be heard from the streets! He already earns 20 sous a day in a lawyer's

office. He is the son of an ex-chorister at St. Jacques du Haut Pas.

Ah! he adores me to such a pitch that one day when he saw me making

batter for pancakes, he said to me, 'Mamselle, make fritters of your

gloves, and I will eat them.' Only artists are able to say things like

that. Ah! he is very good-looking, and I feel as if I am about to fall

madly in love with the little fellow. No matter, I tell Blachevelle

that I adore him: what a falsehood, eh, what a falsehood!"

After a pause, Favourite continued,--

"Dahlia, look you, I am sad. It has done nothing but rain all the

summer: the wind annoys me, Blachevelle is excessively mean, there are

hardly any green peas in the market, one does not know what to eat; I

have the spleen, as the English say, for butter is so dear; and then it

is horrifying that we are dining in a room with a bed in it, and that

disgusts me with life."

CHAPTER VII.

THE WISDOM OF THOLOMYÈS.

At length, when all were singing noisily, or talking all together,

Tholomyès interfered.

"Let us not talk hap-hazard or too quickly," he exclaimed; "we must

meditate if we desire to be striking; too much improvisation stupidly

empties the mind. Gentlemen, no haste; let us mingle majesty with our

gayety, eat contemplatively, and let _festina lente_ be our rule. We

must not hurry. Look at the Spring; if it goes ahead too fast it is

floored, that is to say, nipped by frost. Excessive zeal ruins the

peach and apricot trees; excessive zeal kills the grace and joy of good

dinners. No zeal, gentlemen; Grimaud de la Reynière is of the same

opinion as Talleyrand."

A dull rebellion broke out in the party.

"Tholomyès, leave us at peace," said Blachevelle.

"Down with the tyrant!" said Fameuil.

"Sunday exists," Listolier added.

"We are sober," Fameuil remarked again.

"Tholomyès," said Blachevelle, "contemplate my calmness" (_mon calme._)

"You are the Marquis of that ilk," Tholomyès replied. This poor pun

produced the effect of a stone thrown into a pond. The Marquis de

Montcalm was a celebrated Royalist at that day. All the frogs were

silent.

"My friends," Tholomyès shouted with the accent of a man who is

recapturing his empire, "recover yourselves: too great stupor should

not greet this pun which has fallen from the clouds, for everything

that falls in such a manner is not necessarily worthy of enthusiasm

and respect. Far be from me to insult puns: I honor them according to

their deserts, and no more. All the most august, sublime, and charming

in humanity and perhaps beyond humanity have played upon words. Christ

made a pun on Saint Peter, Moses on Isaac, Æschylus on Polynices, and

Cleopatra on Octavius. And note the fact that Cleopatra's pun preceded

the battle of Actium, and that, were it not for that pun, no one would

know the town of Toryne, a Greek word signifying a potladle. This

granted, I return to my exhortation. Brethren, I repeat, no zeal, no

row, no excess, even in witticisms, gayeties, merriments, and playing

upon words. Listen to me, for I possess the prudence of Amphiaralis

and the baldness of Cæsar; there should be a limit even to the rebus.

_Est modus in rebus_. There should be a limit even to dinners; you

are fond of apple-puffs, ladies, but no abuse; even in the matter

of apple-puffs, good sense and art are needed. Gluttony chastises

the glutton. _Gula punit gulax_. Indigestion was sent into the world

to read a lecture to our stomachs; and, bear this in mind, each of

our passions, even love, has a stomach which must not be filled too

full. In all things, we must write betimes the word _finis_, we must

restrain ourselves when it becomes urgent, put a bolt on our appetites,

lock up our fancy, and place ourselves under arrest. The wise man is

he who knows how, at a given moment, to arrest himself. Place some

confidence in me: it does not follow because I know a little law, as my

examinations prove; because I have supported a thesis in Latin as to

the mode in which torture was applied at Rome at the time when Munatius

Demens was _quæstor parricidæ_; and because I am going to be a Doctor

at Law, as it seems,--it does not necessarily follow, I say, that I am

an ass. I recommend to you moderation in your desires. As truly as my

name is Félix Tholomyès, I am speaking the truth. Happy the man who,

when the hour has struck, forms an heroic resolve, and abdicates like

Sylla or Origen."

Favourite was listening with profound attention. "Félix!" she said,

"what a pretty name; I like it. It is Latin, and means happy."

Tholomyès continued,--

"Gentlemen, be suspicious of women; woe to the man who surrenders

himself to a woman's fickle heart; woman is perfidious and tortuous,

and detests the serpent from professional jealousy. It is the shop

opposite."

"Tholomyès," Blachevelle shouted, "you are drunk."

"I hope so!"

"Then be jolly."

"I am agreeable," Tholomyès answered. And filling his glass, he rose.

"Glory to wine! _nunc te, Bacche, canam_! Pardon, ladies, that is

Spanish, and the proof, Señoras, is this: as the country is, so is the

measure. The arroba of Castille contains sixteen quarts, the cantaro

of Alicante twelve, the almuda of the Canary Isles twenty-five, the

cuartino of the Balearic Isles twenty-six, and Czar Peter's boot

thirty. Long live the Czar who was great, and his boot which was

greater still! Ladies, take a friend's advice; deceive your neighbor,

if you think proper. The peculiarity of love is to wander, and it is

not made to crouch like an English servant girl who has stiff knees

from scrubbing. It is said that error is human; but I say, error

is amorous. Ladies, I idolize you all. O Zéphine, you with your

seductive face, you would be charming were you not all askew; your

face looks for all the world as if it had been sat upon by mistake.

As for Favourite, O ye Nymphs and Muses! one day when Blachevelle

was crossing the gutter in the Rue Guérin-Boisseau, he saw a pretty

girl with white, well-drawn-up stockings, who displayed her legs.

The prologue was pleasing, and Blachevelle fell in love; the girl he

loved was Favourite. O Favourite, you have Ionian lips; there was a

Greek painter of the name of Euphorion, who was christened the painter

of lips, and this Greek alone would be worthy to paint your mouth.

Listen to me: before you there was not a creature deserving of the

name; you are made to receive the apple like Venus, or to eat it like

Eve. Beauty begins with you, and you deserve a patent for inventing a

pretty woman. You alluded to my name just now; it affected me deeply,

but we must be distrustful of names, for they may be deceptive. My

name is Félix, and yet I am not happy. Let us not blindly accept the

indications they give us; it would be a mistake to write to Liège for

corks, or to Pau for gloves.[1] Miss Dahlia, in your place I would

call myself Rose, for a flower ought to smell agreeably, and a woman

have spirit. I say nothing of Fantine, for she is a dreamer, pensive

and sensitive; she is a phantom, having the form of a nymph, and the

modesty of a nun, who has strayed into the life of a grisette, but

takes shelter in illusions, and who sings, prays, and looks at the

blue sky, without exactly knowing what she sees or what she does, and

who, with her eyes fixed on heaven, wanders about a garden in which

there are more birds than ever existed. O Fantine, be aware of this

fact: I, Tholomyès, am an illusion--why, the fair girl of chimeræ is

not even listening to me! All about her is freshness, suavity, youth,

and sweet morning brightness. O Fantine, girl worthy to be called

Margaret or Pearl, you are a woman of the fairest East. Ladies, here

is a second piece of advice; do not marry, for marriage is a risk, and

you had better shun it. But nonsense! I am wasting my words! girls are

incurable about wedlock; and all that we sages may say will not prevent

waistcoat-makers and shoebinders from dreaming of husbands loaded with

diamonds. Well, beauties, be it so: but bear this in mind, you eat too

much sugar. You have only one fault, O women, and that is nibbling

sugar. O rodent sex, your pretty little white teeth adore sugar. Now,

listen to this: sugar is a salt, and salts are of a drying nature,

and sugar is the most drying of all salts. It pumps out the fluidity

of the blood through the veins; this produces first coagulation and

then solidifying of the blood; from this come tubercles in the lungs,

and thence death. Hence do not nibble sugar, and you will live. I now

turn to my male hearers: Gentlemen, make conquests. Rob one another of

your well-beloved ones remorselessly; change partners, for, in love

there are no friends. Whenever there is a pretty woman, hostilities are

opened; there is no quarter, but war to the knife! a pretty woman is a

_casus belli_ and a flagrant offence. All the invasions of history were

produced by petticoats; for woman is the lawful prey of man. Romulus

carried off the Sabine women, William the Saxon women, and Cæsar the

Roman women. A man who is not loved soars like a vulture over the

mistresses of other men: and for my part, I offer all these unfortunate

widowers, Bonaparte's sublime proclamation to the army of Italy:

'Soldiers, you want for everything; the enemy possesses it.'"

Here Tholomyès broke off.

"Take a breather, my boy," said Blachevelle.

At the same time the other three gentlemen struck up to a doleful air

one of those studio-songs, as destitute of sense as the motion of a

tree or the sound of the wind, which are composed extemporaneously,

either in rhyme or prose, which spring up from the smoke of pipes,

and fly away with it. The song was not adapted to calm Tholomyès'

inspiration; hence he emptied his glass, filled it again, and began

once more.

"Down with wisdom! forget all I have said to you. Be neither prudish,

nor prudent, nor _prud'hommes._ I drink the health of jollity: so let

us be jolly. Let us complete our legal studies by folly and good food,

for indigestion should run in a curricle with digests. Let Justinian

be the male and merriment the female! Live, O creation; the world is

one large diamond; I am happy, and the birds are astounding. What a

festival all around us; the nightingale is a gratis Elleviou. Summer,

I salute thee. O Luxembourg! O ye Georgics of the Rue Madame and the

Allée de l'Observatoire! O ye dreaming soldiers! O ye delicious nurses,

who, while taking care of children, fancy what your own will be like!

the Pampas of America would please me if I had not the arcades of the

Odéon. My soul is flying away to the Virgin forests and the savannas.

All is glorious: the flies are buzzing in the light; the sun has

sneezed forth the humming-bird. Kiss me, Fantine!"

He made a mistake and kissed Favourite.

[Footnote 1: An untranslatable pun based on _chêne-liège_ and _peau_.]

CHAPTER VIII.

THE DEATH OF A HORSE.

"It is a better dinner at Édon's than at Bombarda's," Zéphine exclaimed.

"I prefer Bombarda," Blachevelle declared; "there is more luxury: it

is more Asiatic. Just look at the dining-room with its mirrors: look

at the knives, they are silver-handled here and bone at Édon's; now,

silver is more precious than bone."

"Excepting for those persons who have a silver chin," Tholomyès

observed.

He was looking at this moment at the dome of the Invalides which was

visible from Bombardas window. There was a pause.

"Tholomyès," cried Fameuil, "just now, Listolier and I had a

discussion."

"A discussion is good," replied Tholomyès; "a quarrel is better."

"We discussed philosophy; which do you prefer, Descartes or Spinoza?"

"Désangiers," said Tholomyès.

This judgment rendered, he continued,--

"I consent to live: all is not finished in the world. Since men can

still be unreasonable, I return thanks to the immortal gods. Men lie,

but they laugh: they affirm, but they doubt: and something unexpected

issues from the syllogism. This is grand: there are still in the world

human beings who can joyously open and shut the puzzle-box of paradox.

This wine, ladies, which you are drinking so calmly, is Madeira, you

must know, grown at Coural das Freiras, which is three hundred and

seventeen _toises_ above the sea level. Attention while drinking!

three hundred and seventeen _toises_, and M. Bombarda, the magnificent

restaurateur, lets you have these three hundred and seventeen _toises_

for four francs, fifty centimes."

Tholomyès drained his glass and then continued:

"Honor to Bombarda! he would be equal to Memphis of Elephanta if he

could ladle me up an Almeh, and to Thygelion of Cheronea if he could

procure me an Hetæra! for, ladies, there were Bombardas in Greece and

Egypt, as Apuleius teaches us. Alas! ever the same thing and nothing

new: nothing is left unpublished in the creation of the Creator.

'Nothing new under the sun,' says Solomon: _amor omnibus idem_, and

Carabine gets into the St. Cloud fly-boat with Carabin, just as Aspasia

embarked with Pericles aboard the Samos fleet. One last word: Do you

know who Aspasia was, ladies? Although she lived at a time when women

had no soul, she was a soul: a soul of a pink and purple hue, hotter

than fire, and fresher than the dawn. Aspasia was a creature in whom

the two extremes of woman met. She was a prostituted goddess: Socrates

_plus_ Manon Lescaut."

Tholomyès, when started, would hardly have been checked, had not a

horse fallen in the street at this very moment. Through the shock,

cart and orator stopped short. It was a Beauce mare, old and lean

and worthy of the knacker, dragging a very heavy cart. On getting in

front of Bombarda's, the beast, exhausted and worn out, refused to go

any further, and this incident produced a crowd. The carter, swearing

and indignant, had scarce time to utter with the suitable energy the

sacramental word, "Rascal!" backed up by a pitiless lash, ere the poor

beast fell, never to rise again. Tholomyès' gay hearers turned their

heads away on noticing the confusion, while he wound up his speech by

the following sad strophe,--

"Elle était de ce monde où coucous et carrosses,

Ont le même destin,

Et, rosse, elle a vécu ce que vivent les rosses,

L'espace d'un: Mâtin!"

"Poor horse!" Fantine said with a sigh; and Dahlia shouted,--

"Why, here is Fantine beginning to feel pity for horses: how can she be

such a fool!"

At this moment, Favourite crossed her arms and threw her head back; she

then looked boldly at Tholomyès, and said,--

"Well, how about the surprise?"

"That is true, the hour has arrived," Tholomyès answered. "Gentlemen,

it is time to surprise the ladies. Pray wait for us a moment."

"It begins with a kiss," said Blacheve.

"On the forehead," Tholomyès added.

Each solemnly kissed the forehead of his mistress: then they proceeded

to the door in Indian file, with a finger on their lip. Favourite

clapped her hands as they went out.

"It is amusing already," she said.

"Do not be long," Fantine murmured, "we are waiting for you."

CHAPTER IX.

THE JOYOUS END OF JOY.

The girls, when left alone, leaned out of the windows, two by two,

talking, looking out, and wondering. They watched the young men leave

the Bombarda cabaret arm in arm; they turned round, made laughing

signs, and disappeared in that dusty Sunday mob which once a week

invaded the Champs Élysées.

"Do not be long," Fantine cried.

"What will they bring us?" said Zéphine.

"I am certain it will be pretty," said Dahlia.

"For my part," Favourite added, "I hope it will be set in gold."

They were soon distracted by the movement on the quay, which they could

notice through the branches of the lofty trees, and which greatly

amused them. It was the hour for the mail-carts and stages to start,

and nearly all those bound for the South and West at that time passed

through the Champs Élysées. Most of them followed the quay and went

out by the Passy barrier. Every moment some heavy vehicle, painted

yellow and black, heavily loaded and rendered shapeless by trunks and

valises, dashed through the crowd with the sparks of a forge, the dust

representing the smoke. This confusion amused the girls.

"What a racket!" exclaimed Favourite; "one might say a pile of chairs

was flying about."

One of these vehicles, which could hardly be distinguished through the

branches, stopped for a moment, and then started again at a gallop.

This surprised Fantine.

"That is strange," she said; "I fancied that the diligence never

stopped."

Favourite shrugged her shoulders.

"This Fantine is really amazing, and is surprised at the simplest

things. Let us suppose that I am a traveller and say to the guard of

the stage-coach, "I will walk on and you can pick me up on the quay as

you pass." The coach passes, sees me, stops and takes me in. That is

done every day; you are ignorant of life, my dear."

Some time elapsed; all at once Favourite started as if waking from

sleep.

"Well," she said, "where is the surprise?"

"Oh yes," Dahlia continued, "the famous surprise."

"They are a long time," said Fantine.

Just as Fantine had ended this sigh, the waiter who had served the

dinner came in; he held in his hand something that resembled a letter.

"What is that?" Favourite asked.

The waiter answered,--

"It is a paper which the gentlemen left for you, ladies."

"Why did you not bring it to us at once?"

"Because the gentlemen," the waiter went on, "ordered that it should

not be delivered to you for an hour."

Favourite snatched the paper from the waiter's hands; it was really a

letter.

"Stay," she said; "there is no address, but the following words are

written on it: THIS IS THE SURPRISE." She quickly opened the letter and

read (she could read):--

"WELL-BELOVED,--Know that we have relatives: perhaps you are not

perfectly cognizant what they are; it means fathers and mothers in the

civil, puerile, and honest code. Well, these relatives are groaning;

these old people claim us as their own; these worthy men and women call

us prodigal sons. They desire our return home, and offer to kill the

fatted calf. We obey them, as we are virtuous; at the hour when you

read this, five impetuous steeds will be conveying us back to our papas

and mammas. 'We decamp,' as Bossuet said; "we are going, gone." We are

flying away in the arms of Laffitte and on the wings of Gaillard. The

Toulouse coach is dragging us away from the abyss, and that abyss is

yourselves, pretty dears. We are re-entering society, duty, and order,

at a sharp trot, and at the rate of nine miles an hour. It is important

for our country that we should become, like everybody else, Prefects,

fathers of a family, game-keepers, and councillors of state. Revere us,

for we are sacrificing ourselves. Dry up your tears for us rapidly, and

get a substitute speedily. If this letter lacerates your hearts, treat

it in the same fashion. Good-by. For nearly two years we rendered you

happy, so do not owe us any grudge.

(Signed)

BLACHEVELLE.

FAMEUIL.

LISTOLIER.

FELIX THOLOMYÈS.

"P.S. The dinner is paid for."

The four girls looked at each other, and Favourite was the first to

break the silence.

"I don't care," she said, "it is a capital joke."

"It is very funny," Zéphine remarked.

"It must have been Blachevelle who had that idea," Favourite continued;

"it makes me in love with him. So soon as he has left me I am beginning

to grow fond of him; the old story."

"No," said Dahlia, "that is an idea of Tholomyès. That can be easily

seen."

"In that case," Favourite retorted, "down with Blachevelle and long

live Tholomyès!"

And they burst into a laugh, in which Fantine joined.

An hour later though, when she returned to her bed-room, she wept: this

was, as we have said, her first love; she had yielded to Tholomyès as

to a husband, and the poor girl had a child.

BOOK IV.

TO CONFIDE IS SOMETIMES TO ABANDON.

CHAPTER I.

TWO MOTHERS MEET.

There was in the first quarter of this century a sort of pot-house

at Montfermeil, near Paris, which no longer exists. It was kept by

a couple of the name of Thénardier, and was situated in the Rue du

Boulanger. Over the door a board was nailed to the wall, and on this

board was painted something resembling a man carrying on his back

another man, who wore large gilt general's epaulettes with silver

stars; red dabs represented blood, and the rest of the painting was

smoke, probably representing a battle. At the bottom could be read the

inscription: THE SERGEANT OF WATERLOO.

Though nothing is more common than a cart at a pot-house door, the

vehicle, or rather fragment of a vehicle, which blocked up the street

in front of the Sergeant of Waterloo, one spring evening in 1818,

would have certainly attracted the attention of any painter who had

passed that way. It was the forepart of one of those wains used in wood

countries for dragging planks and trunks of trees; it was composed

of a massive iron axle-tree, in which a heavy pole was imbedded and

supported by two enormous wheels. The whole thing was sturdy, crushing,

and ugly, and it might have passed for the carriage of a monster gun.

The ruts had given the wheels, felloes, spokes, axle-tree, and pole a

coating of mud, a hideous yellow plaster, much like that with which

cathedrals are so often adorned. The wood-work was hidden by mud and

the iron by rust. Under the axle-tree was festooned a heavy chain

suited for a convict Goliath. This chain made you think, not of the

wood it was intended to secure, but of the mastodons and mammoths for

which it would have served as harness; it had the air of a cyclopean

and superhuman bagne, and seemed removed from some monster. Homer would

have bound Polyphemus with it, and Shakespeare, Caliban.

Why was this thing at this place in the street? First, to block it up;

secondly, to finish the rusting process. There is in the old social

order a multitude of institutions which may be found in the same way

in the open air, and which have no other reasons for being there.

The centre of the chain hung rather close to the ground, and on the

curve, as on the rope of a swing, two little girls were seated on this

evening, in an exquisite embrace, one about two years and a half, the

other eighteen months; the younger being in the arms of the elder. An

artfully-tied handkerchief prevented them from falling, for a mother

had seen this frightful chain, and said, "What a famous plaything

for my children!" The two children, who were prettily dressed and

with some taste, were radiant; they looked like two roses among old

iron; their eyes were a triumph, their healthy cheeks laughed; one

had auburn hair, the other was a brunette; their innocent faces had

a look of surprise; a flowering shrub a little distance off sent to

passers-by a perfume which seemed to come from them; and the younger

displayed her nudity with the chaste indecency of childhood. Above

and around their two delicate heads, moulded in happiness and bathed

in light, the gigantic wheels, black with rust, almost terrible, and

bristling with curves and savage angles, formed the porch of a cavern,

as it were. A few yards off, and seated in the inn door, the mother, a

woman of no very pleasing appearance, but touching at this moment, was

swinging the children by the help of a long cord, and devouring them

with her eyes, for fear of an accident, with that animal and heavenly

expression peculiar to maternity. At each oscillation the hideous links

produced a sharp sound, resembling a cry of anger. The little girls

were delighted; the setting sun mingled with the joy, and nothing could

be so charming as this caprice of accident which had made of a Titanic

chain a cherub's swing. While playing with her little ones, the mother

sang, terribly out of tune, a romance, very celebrated at that day,--

"Il le faut, disait un guerrier."

Her song and contemplation of her daughters prevented her hearing and

seeing what took place in the street. Some one, however, had approached

her, as she began the first couplets of the romance, and suddenly she

heard a voice saying close to her ear,--

"You have two pretty children, Madame."

"--a la belle et tendre Imogène,"

the mother answered, continuing her song, and then turned her head. A

woman was standing a few paces from her, who also had a child, which

she was carrying in her arms. She also carried a heavy bag. This

woman's child was one of the most divine creatures possible to behold;

she was a girl between two and three years of age, and could have vied

with the two other little ones in the coquettishness of her dress. She

had on a hood of fine linen, ribbons at her shoulders, and Valenciennes

lace in her cap. Her raised petticoats displayed her white, dimpled,

fine thigh; it was admirably pink and healthy, and her cheeks made

one long to bite them. Nothing could be said of her eyes, except that

they were very large, and that she had magnificent lashes, for she

was asleep. She was sleeping with the absolute confidence peculiar to

her age; a mother's arms are made of tenderness, and children sleep

soundly in them. As for the mother, she looked grave and sorrowful, and

was dressed like a work-girl who was trying to become a country-woman

again. She was young; was she pretty? Perhaps so; but in this dress

she did not appear so. Her hair, a light lock of which peeped out,

seemed very thick, but was completely hidden beneath a nun's hood;

ugly, tight, and fastened under her chin. Laughter displays fine teeth,

when a person happens to possess them; but she did not laugh. Her eyes

looked as if they had not been dry for a long time; she had a fatigued

and rather sickly air, and she looked at the child sleeping in her arms

in the manner peculiar to a mother who has suckled her babe. A large

blue handkerchief, like those served out to the invalids, folded like

a shawl, clumsily hid her shape. Her hands were rough and covered with

red spots, and her forefinger was hardened and torn by the needle. She

had on a brown cloth cloak, a cotton gown, and heavy shoes. It was

Fantine.

It was difficult to recognize her, but, after an attentive examination,

she still possessed her beauty. As for her toilette,--that aerian

toilette of muslin and ribbons which seemed made of gayety, folly, and

music, to be full of bells, and perfumed with lilacs,--it had faded

away like the dazzling hoar-frost which looks like diamonds in the sun;

it melts, and leaves the branch quite black.

Ten months had elapsed Bince the "good joke." What had taken place

during these ten months? We can guess. After desertion, want. Fantine

at once lost sight of Favourite, Zéphine, and Dahlia, for this tie

broken on the side of the men separated the women. They would have

been greatly surprised a fortnight after had they been told that they

were friends, for there was no reason for it. Fantine remained alone

when the father of her child had gone away--alas! such ruptures are

irrevocable. She found herself absolutely isolated; she had lost her

habit of working, and had gained a taste for pleasure. Led away by her

_liaison_ with Tholomyès to despise the little trade she knew, she had

neglected her connection, and it was lost. She had no resource. Fantine

could hardly read, and could not write; she had been merely taught in

childhood to sign her name, and she had sent a letter to Tholomyès,

then a second, then a third, through a public writer, but Tholomyès

did not answer one of them. One day Fantine heard the gossips say,

while looking at her daughter, "Children like that are not regarded

seriously, people shrug their shoulders at them." Then she thought of

Tholomyès who shrugged his shoulders at her child, and did not regard

the innocent creature seriously, and her heart turned away from this

man. What was she to do now? She knew not where to turn. She had

committed a fault, but the foundation of her nature, we must remember,

was modesty and virtue. She felt vaguely that she was on the eve of

falling into distress, and gliding into worse. She needed courage, and

she had it. The idea occurred to her of returning to her native town M.

sur M. There some one might know her, and give her work; but she must

hide her fault. And she vaguely glimpsed at the possible necessity of a

separation more painful still than the first; her heart was contracted,

but she formed her resolution. Fantine, as we shall see, possessed the

stern bravery of life. She had already valiantly given up dress; she

dressed in calico, and had put all her silk ribbons and laces upon her

daughter, the only vanity left her, and it was a holy one. She sold

all she possessed, which brought her in 200 francs; and when she had

paid her little debts, she had only about 80 francs left. At the age

of two-and-twenty, on a fine Spring morning, she left Paris, carrying

her child on her back. Any one who had seen them pass would have felt

pity for them; the woman had nothing in the world but her child, and

the child nothing but her mother in her world. Fantine had suckled her

child; this had strained her chest, and she was coughing a little.

We shall have no further occasion to speak of M. Félix Tholomyès.

We will merely say that twenty years later, in the reign of Louis

Philippe, he was a stout country lawyer, influential and rich, a

sensible elector, and a very strict juror, but always a man of pleasure.

About mid-day, after resting herself now and then by travelling from

time to time, at the rate of three or four leagues an hour, in what

were then called the "little vehicles of the suburbs of Paris," Fantine

found herself at Montfermeil, in the Ruelle Boulanger. As she passed

the Sergeant of Waterloo, the two little girls in their monster swing

had dazzled her, and she stopped before this vision of joy. There are

charms in life, and these two little girls were one for this mother.

She looked at them with great emotion, for the presence of angels

is an announcement of Paradise. She thought she saw over this inn

the mysterious HERE of Providence. These two little creatures were

evidently happy! She looked then, and admired them with such tenderness

that at the moment when the mother was drawing breath between two

verses of her song, she could not refrain from saying to her what we

have already recorded.

"You have two pretty children, Madame."

The most ferocious creatures are disarmed by a caress given to their

little ones. The mother raised her head, thanked her, and bade her sit

down on the door bench. The two women began talking.

"My name is Madame Thénardier," the mother of the little ones said; "we

keep this inn."

Then returning to her romance, she went on humming,--

"Il le faut, je suis chevalier,

Et je pars pour la Palestine."

This Madame Thénardier was a red-headed, thin, angular woman, the

soldier's wife in all its ugliness, and, strange to say, with a

languishing air which she owed to reading romances. She was a sort of

lackadaisical male-woman. Old romances, working on the imaginations of

landladies, produce that effect. She was still young, scarce thirty. If

this woman, now sitting, had been standing up, perhaps her height and

colossal proportions, fitting for a show, would have at once startled

the traveller, destroyed her confidence, and prevented what we have to

record. A person sitting instead of standing up--destinies hang on this.

The woman told her story with some modification. She was a work-girl,

her husband was dead; she could get no work in Paris, and was going to

seek it elsewhere, in her native town. She had left Paris that very

morning on foot; as she felt tired from carrying her child, she had

travelled by the stage-coach to Villemomble, from that place she walked

to Montfermeil. The little one had walked a little, but not much, for

she was so young, and so she had been obliged to cany her, and the

darling had gone to sleep,--and as she said this she gave her daughter

a passionate kiss, which awoke her. The babe opened her eyes, large

blue eyes like her mother's, and gazed at what? Nothing, everything,

with that serious and at times stern air of infants, which is a mystery

of their luminous innocence in the presence of our twilight virtues.

We might say that they feel themselves to be angels, and know us to

be men. Then the child began laughing, and, though its mother had to

check it, slipped down to the ground with the undauntable energy of

a little creature wishing to run. All at once, she noticed the other

two children in their swing, stopped short, and put out her tongue as

a sign of admiration. Mother Thénardier unfastened her children, took

them out of the swing, and said,--

"Play about, all three."

Children soon get familiar, and in a minute the little Thénardiers were

playing with the new-comer at making holes in the ground, which was an

immense pleasure. The stranger child was very merry; the goodness of

the mother is written in the gayety of the baby. She had picked up a

piece of wood which she used as a spade, and was energetically digging

a grave large enough for a fly. The two went on talking.

"What 's the name of your bantling?"

"Cosette."

For Cosette read Euphrasie, for that was the child's real name; but

the mother had converted Euphrasie into Cosette, through that gentle,

graceful instinct peculiar to mothers and the people, which changes

Josefa into Pépita, and Françoise into Sellette. It is a species

of derivation which deranges and disconcerts the entire science of

etymologists. We know a grandmother who contrived to make out of

Theodore, Gnon.

"What is her age?"

"Going on to three."

"Just the same age as my eldest."

In the mean time the children were grouped in a posture of profound

anxiety and blessedness; an event had occurred. A large worm crept out

of the ground, and they were frightened, and were in ecstasy; their

radiant brows touched each other; and they looked like three heads in a

halo.

"How soon children get to know one another," Mother Thénardier

exclaimed; "why, they might be taken for three sisters."

The word was probably the spark which the other mother had been waiting

for; she seized the speaker's hand, looked at her fixedly, and said,--

"Will you take charge of my child for me?"

The woman gave one of those starts of surprise which are neither assent

nor refusal. Fantine continued,--

"Look you, I cannot take the child with me to my town, for when a woman

has a baby, it is a hard matter for her to get a situation. People are

so foolish in our part. It was Heaven that made me pass in front of

your inn; when I saw your little ones so pretty, so clean, so happy,

it gave me a turn. I said to myself, "She is a kind mother." It is so;

they will be three sisters. Then I shall not be long before I come

back. Will you take care of my child?"

"We will see, said Mother Thénardier.

"I would pay six francs a month."

Here a man's voice cried from the back of the tap-room,--

"Can't be done under seven, and six months paid in advance."

"Six times seven are forty-two," said the landlady.

"I will pay it," said the mother.

"And seventeen francs in addition for extra expenses," the man's voice

added.

"Total fifty-seven francs," said Madame Thénardier; and through these

figures she sang vaguely,--

"Il le faut, disait un guerrier."

"I will pay it," the mother said; "I have eighty francs, and shall have

enough left to get home on foot. I shall earn money there, and so soon

as I have a little I will come and fetch my darling."

The man's voice continued,--

"Has the little one a stock of clothing?"

"It is my husband," said Mother Thénardier.

"Of course she has clothes, poor little treasure. I saw it was your

husband; and a fine stock of clothes too, a wonderful stock, a dozen of

everything, and silk frocks like a lady. The things are in my bag."

"They must be handed over," the man's voice remarked.

"Of course they must," said the mother; "it would be funny if I left my

child naked."

The master's face appeared.

"All right," he said.

The bargain was concluded, the mother spent the night at the inn, paid

her money and left her child, fastened up her bag, which was now light,

and started the next morning with the intention of returning soon. Such

departures are arranged calmly, but they entail despair. A neighbor's

wife saw the mother going away, and went home saying,--

"I have just seen a woman crying in the street as if her heart was

broken."

When Cosette's mother had gone, the man said to his wife,--

"That money will meet my bill for one hundred and ten francs, which

falls due to-morrow, and I was fifty francs short. It would have been

protested, and I should have had a bailiff put in. You set a famous

mouse-trap with your young ones."

"Without suspecting it," said the woman.

CHAPTER II

A SKETCH OF TWO UGLY FACES.

The captured mouse was very small, but the cat is pleased even with

a thin mouse. Who were the Thénardiers? We will say one word about

them for the present, and complete the sketch hereafter. These beings

belonged to the bastard class, composed of coarse parvenus, and of

degraded people of intellect, which stands between the classes called

the middle and the lower, and combines some of the faults of the second

with nearly all the vices of the first, though without possessing the

generous impulse of the workingman or the honest regularity of the

tradesman.

Theirs were those dwarf natures which easily become monstrous when any

gloomy fire accidentally warms them. There was in the woman the basis

of a witch, in the man the stuff for a beggar. Both were in the highest

degree susceptible of that sort of hideous progress which is made in

the direction of evil. There are crab-like souls which constantly

recoil toward darkness, retrograde in life rather than advance, employ

experience to augment their deformity, incessantly grow worse, and grow

more and more covered with an increasing blackness. This man and this

woman had souls of this sort.

Thénardier was peculiarly troublesome to the physiognomist: there are

some men whom you need only look at to distrust them, for they are

restless behind and threatening in front. There is something of the

unknown in them. We can no more answer for what they have done than

for what they will do. The shadow they have in their glance denounces

them. Merely by hearing them say a word or seeing them make a gesture,

we get a glimpse of dark secrets in their past, dark mysteries in

their future. This Thénardier, could he be believed, had been a

soldier--sergeant, he said; he had probably gone through the campaign

of 1815, and had even behaved rather bravely, as it seems. We shall

see presently how the matter really stood. The sign of his inn was

an allusion to one of his exploits, and he had painted it himself,

for he could do a little of everything--badly. It was the epoch when

the old classical romance--which after being _Clélie_, had now become

_Lodoiska_, and though still noble, was daily growing more vulgar, and

had fallen from Mademoiselle de Scudéri to Madame Bournon Malarme, and

from Madame de Lafayette to Madame Barthélémy Hadot--was inflaming

the loving soul of the porters' wives in Paris, and even extended its

ravages into the suburbs. Madame Thénardier was just intelligent enough

to read books of this nature, and lived on them. She thus drowned

any brains she possessed, and, so long as she remained young and a

little beyond, it gave her a sort of pensive attitude by the side of

her husband, who was a scamp of some depth, an almost grammatical

ruffian, coarse and delicate at the same time, but who, in matters of

sentimentalism, read Pigault Lebrun, and, in "all that concerned the

sex," as he said in his jargon, was a correct and unadulterated booby.

His wife was some twelve or fifteen years younger than he, and when

her romantically flowing locks began to grow gray, when the Megæra was

disengaged from the Pamela, she was only a stout wicked woman, who had

been pampered with foolish romances. As such absurdities cannot be read

with impunity, the result was that her eldest daughter was christened

Éponine; as for the younger, the poor girl was all but named Gulnare,

and owed it to a fortunate diversion made by a romance of Ducray

Duminil's, that she was only christened Azelma.

By the way, all is not ridiculous and superficial in the curious epoch

to which we are alluding, and which might be called the anarchy of

baptismal names. By the side of the romantic element, which we have

just pointed out, there was the social symptom. It is not rare at

the present day for a drover's son to be called Arthur, Alfred, or

Alphonse, and for the Viscount--if there are any Viscounts left--to be

called Thomas, Pierre, or Jacques. This displacement which gives the

"elegant" name to the plebeian, and the rustic name to the aristocrat,

is nothing else than an eddy of equality. The irresistible penetration

of the new breeze is visible in this as in everything else. Beneath

this apparent discord there is a grand and deep thing, the French

Revolution.

CHAPTER III.

THE LARK.

It is not enough to be bad in order to prosper: and the pot-house

was a failure. Thanks to the fifty-seven francs, Thénardier had been

able to avoid a protest, and honor his signature; but the next month

they wanted money again, and his wife took Cosette's outfit to Paris

and pledged it for sixty francs. So soon as this sum was spent, the

Thénardiers grew accustomed to see in the little girl a child they had

taken in through charity, and treated her accordingly. As she had no

clothes, she was dressed in the left-off chemises and petticoats of

the little Thénardiers, that is to say, in rags. She was fed on the

leavings of everybody, a little better than the dog, and a little worse

than the cat. Dog and cat were her usual company at dinner: for Cosette

ate with them under the table off a wooden trencher like theirs.

The mother, who had settled, as we shall see hereafter, at M. sur M.,

wrote, or, to speak more correctly, had letters written every month

to inquire after her child. The Thénardiers invariably replied that

Cosette was getting on famously. When the first six months had passed,

the mother sent seven francs for the seventh month, and continued to

send the money punctually month by month. The year had not ended before

Thénardier said, "A fine thing that! what does she expect us to do with

seven francs!" and he wrote to demand twelve. The mother, whom they

persuaded that her child was happy and healthy, submitted, and sent the

twelve francs.

Some natures cannot love on one side without hating on the other.

Mother Thénardier passionately loved her own two daughters, which

made her detest the stranger. It is sad to think that a mother's love

can look so ugly. Though Cosette occupied so little room, it seemed

to her as if her children were robbed of it, and that the little one

diminished the air her daughters breathed. This woman, like many women

of her class, had a certain amount of caresses and another of blows

and insults to expend daily. If she had not had Cosette, it is certain

that her daughters, though they were idolized, would have received

the entire amount; but the strange child did the service of diverting

the blows on herself, while the daughters received only the caresses.

Cosette did not make a movement that did not bring down on her head a

hailstorm of violent and unmerited chastisement. The poor weak child,

unnecessarily punished, scolded, cuffed, and beaten, saw by her side

two little creatures like herself who lived in radiant happiness.

As Madame Thénardier was unkind to Cosette, Éponine and Azelma were the

same; for children, at that age, are copies of their mother; the form

is smaller, that is all. A year passed, then another, and people said

in the village,--

"Those Thénardiers are worthy people. They are not well off, and yet

they bring up a poor child left on their hands."

Cosette was supposed to be deserted by her mother; Thénardier, however,

having learned in some obscure way that the child was probably

illegitimate, and that the mother could not confess it, insisted on

fifteen francs a month, saying that the creature was growing and

eating, and threatening to send her back. "She must not play the fool

with me," he shouted, "or I'll let her brat fall like a bomb-shell into

her hiding-place. I must have an increase." The mother paid the fifteen

francs. Year by year the child grew, and so did her wretchedness: so

long as Cosette was little, she was the scape-goat of the two other

children; so soon as she began to be developed a little, that is to

say, even before she was five years old, she became the servant of

the house. At five years, the reader will say, that is improbable;

but, alas! it is true. Social suffering begins at any age. Have we not

recently seen the trial of a certain Dumollard, an orphan, who turned

bandit, and who from the age of five, as the official documents tell

us, was alone in the world and "worked for a living and stole"? Cosette

was made to go on messages, sweep the rooms, the yard, the street, wash

the dishes, and even carry heavy bundles. The Thénardiers considered

themselves the more justified in acting thus, because the mother, who

was still at M. sur M., was beginning to pay badly, and was several

months in arrear.

If the mother had returned to Montfermeil at the end of three years,

she would not have recognized her child. Cosette, so pretty and ruddy

on her arrival in this house, was now thin and sickly. She had a timid

look about her; "It's cunning!" said the Thénardiers. Injustice had

made her sulky and wretchedness had made her ugly. Nothing was left her

but her fine eyes, which were painful to look at, because, as they were

so large, it seemed as if a greater amount of sadness was visible in

them. It was a heart-rending sight to see this poor child, scarce six

years of age, shivering in winter under her calico rags, and sweeping

the street before day-break, with an enormous broom in her small red

hands and a tear in her large eyes.

The country people called her "the lark;" the lower classes, who are

fond of metaphors, had given the name to the poor little creature, who

was no larger than a bird, trembling, frightened, and starting, who was

always the first awake in the house and the village, and ever in the

street or the fields by day-break.

There was this difference, however,--this poor lark never sung.

BOOK V.

THE DESCENT.

CHAPTER I.

PROGRESS IN BLACK-BEAD MAKING.

What had become of the mother, who, according to the people of

Montfermeil, appeared to have deserted her child? Where was she; what

was she doing? After leaving her little Cosette with the Thénardiers,

she had continued her journey and arrived at M. sur M. Fantine had been

away from her province for ten years, and while she had been slowly

descending from misery to misery, her native town had prospered. About

two years before, one of those industrial facts which are the events of

small towns had taken place. The details are important, and we think it

useful to develop them; we might almost say, to understand them.

From time immemorial M. sur M. had as a special trade the imitation

of English jet and German black beads. This trade had hitherto only

vegetated, owing to the dearness of the material, which reacted on

the artisan. At the moment when Fantine returned to M. sur M. an

extraordinary transformation had taken place in the production of

"black articles." Toward the close of 1815, a man, a stranger, had

settled in the town, and had the idea of substituting in this trade

gum lac for rosin, and in bracelets particularly, scraps of bent plate

for welded plate. This slight change was a revolution: it prodigiously

reduced the cost of the material, which, in the first place, allowed

the wages to be raised, a benefit for the town; secondly, improved the

manufacture, an advantage for the consumer; and, thirdly, allowed the

goods to be sold cheap, while tripling them the profit, an advantage

for the manufacturer.

In less than three years the inventor of the process had become rich,

which is a good thing, and had made all rich about him, which is

better. He was a stranger in the department; no one knew anything

about his origin, and but little about his start. It was said that he

had entered the town with but very little money, a few hundred francs

at the most; but with this small capital, placed at the service of an

ingenious idea, and fertilized by regularity and thought, he made his

own fortune and that of the town. On his arrival at M. sur M. he had

the dress, manners, and language of a workingman. It appears that on

the very December night when he obscurely entered M. sur M. with his

knapsack on his back, and a knotted stick in his hand, a great fire

broke out in the Town Hall. This man rushed into the midst of the

flames, and at the risk of his life saved two children who happened to

belong to the captain of gendarmes; hence no one dreamed of asking for

his passport. On this occasion his name was learned; he called himself

Father Madeleine.

CHAPTER II.

MADELEINE.

He was a man of about fifty, with a preoccupied air, and he was

good-hearted. That was all that could be said of him.

Thanks to the rapid progress of this trade which he had so admirably

remodelled, M. sur M. had become a place of considerable trade.

Spain, which consumes an immense amount of jet, gave large orders

for it annually, and in this trade M. sur M. almost rivalled London

and Berlin. Father Madeleine's profits were so great, that after the

second year he was able to build a large factory, in which were two

spacious workshops, one for men, the other for women. Any one who

was hungry need only to come, and was sure to find there employment

and bread. Father Madeleine expected from the men good-will, from

the women purity, and from all probity. He had divided the workshops

in order to separate the sexes, and enable the women and girls to

remain virtuous. On this point he was inflexible, and it was the only

one in which he was at all intolerant. This sternness was the more

justifiable because M. sur M. was a garrison town, and opportunities

for corruption abounded. Altogether his arrival had been a benefit,

and his presence was a providence. Before Father Madeleine came

everything was languishing, and now all led the healthy life of work. A

powerful circulation warmed and penetrated everything; stagnation and

wretchedness were unknown. There was not a pocket, however obscure,

in which there was not a little money, nor a lodging so poor in which

there was not a little joy.

Father Madeleine employed every one. He only insisted on one thing,--be

an honest man, a good girl!

As we have said, in the midst of this activity, of which he was the

cause and the pivot, Father Madeleine made his fortune, but, singularly

enough in a plain man of business, this did not appear to be his

chief care; he seemed to think a great deal of others and but little

of himself. In 1820, he was known to have a sum of 630,000 francs

in Lafitte's bank; but before he put that amount on one side he had

spent more than a million for the town and the poor. The hospital was

badly endowed, and he added ten beds. M. sur M. is divided into an

upper and a lower town; the latter, in which he lived, had only one

school, a poor tenement falling in ruins, and he built two, one for

boys and one for girls. He paid the two teachers double the amount of

their poor official salary, and to some one who expressed surprise, he

said, "The first two functionaries of the State are the nurse and the

schoolmaster." He had established at his own charges an infant-school,

a thing at that time almost unknown in France, and a charitable

fund for old and infirm workmen. As his factory was a centre, a new

district, in which there was a large number of indigent families,

rapidly sprang up around it, and he opened there a free dispensary.

At the beginning, kind souls said, "He is a man who wants to grow

rich:" when it was seen that he enriched the town before enriching

himself, the same charitable souls said, "He is ambitious." This

seemed the more likely because he was religious, and even practised

to a certain extent a course which was admired in those days. He went

regularly to hear Low Mass on Sundays, and the local deputy, who

scented rivalry everywhere, soon became alarmed about this religion.

This deputy, who had been a member of the legislative council of the

Empire, shared the religious ideas of a Father of the Oratory, known

by the name of Fouché, Duc d'Otranto, whose creature and friend he

had been. But when he saw the rich manufacturer Madeleine go to seven

o'clock Low Mass, he scented a possible candidate, and resolved to go

beyond him; he chose a Jesuit confessor, and went to High Mass and

vespers. Ambition at that time was, in the true sense of the term, a

steeple-chase. The poor profited by the alarm, for the honorable deputy

founded two beds at the hospital, which made twelve.

In 1819, the report spread one morning through the town that, on

the recommendation of the Prefect, and in consideration of services

rendered the town, Father Madeleine was about to be nominated by the

king, Mayor of M----. Those who had declared the new-comer an ambitious

man, eagerly seized this opportunity to exclaim: "Did we not say so?"

All M---- was in an uproar; for the rumor was well founded. A few

days after, the appointment appeared in the _Moniteur_, and the next

day Father Madeleine declined the honor. In the same year, the new

processes worked by him were shown at the Industrial Exhibition; and on

the report of the jury, the King made the inventor a Chevalier of the

Legion of Honor. There was a fresh commotion in the little town; "Well,

it was the cross he wanted," but Father Madeleine declined the cross.

Decidedly the man was an enigma, but charitable souls got out of the

difficulty by saying, "After all, he is a sort of adventurer."

As we have seen, the country owed him much, and the poor owed him

everything; he was so useful that he could not help being honored,

and so gentle that people could not help loving him; his work-people

especially adored him, and he bore this adoration with a sort of

melancholy gravity. When he was known to be rich, "people in society"

bowed to him, and he was called in the town Monsieur Madeleine; but

his workmen and the children continued to call him Father Madeleine,

and this caused him his happiest smile. In proportion as he ascended,

invitations showered upon him; and society claimed him as its own. The

little formal drawing-rooms, which had of course been at first closed

to the artisan, opened their doors wide to the millionnaire. A thousand

advances were made to him, but he refused them. This time again

charitable souls were not thrown out: "He is an ignorant man of poor

education. No one knows where he comes from. He could not pass muster

in society, and it is doubtful whether he can read." When he was seen

to be earning money, they said, "He is a tradesman;" when he scattered

his money, they said, "He is ambitious;" when he rejected honor, they

said, "He is an adventurer;" and when he repulsed society, they said,

"He is a brute."

In 1820, five years after his arrival at M., the services he had

rendered the town were so brilliant, the will of the whole country was

so unanimous, that the King again nominated him Mayor of the Town. He

refused again, but the Prefect would not accept his refusal; all the

notables came to beg, the people supplicated him in the open streets,

and the pressure was so great, that he eventually assented. It was

noticed that what appeared specially to determine him was the almost

angry remark of an old woman, who cried to him from her door: "A good

Mayor is useful; a man should not recoil before the good he may be able

to do." This was the third phase of his ascent; Father Madeleine had

become Monsieur Madeleine, and Monsieur Madeleine became Monsieur le

Maire.

CHAPTER III.

SUMS LODGED AT LAFITTE'S.

Father Madeleine remained as simple as he had been on the first day:

he had gray hair, a serious eye, the bronzed face of a workingman,

and the thoughtful face of a philosopher. He habitually wore a

broad-brimmed hat, and a long coat of coarse cloth buttoned up to the

chin. He performed his duties as Mayor, but beyond that lived solitary;

he spoke to few persons, shunned compliments, smiled to save himself

from talking, and gave to save himself from smiling. The women said of

him, "What a good bear!" and his great pleasure was to walk about the

fields. He always took his meals with an open book before him, and he

had a well-selected library. He was fond of books, for they are calm

and sure friends. In proportion as leisure came with fortune, he seemed

to employ it in cultivating his mind: it was noticed that with each

year he spent in M---- his language became more polite, chosen, and

gentle.

He was fond of taking a gun with him on his walks, but rarely fired;

when he did so by accident, he had an infallible aim, which was almost

terrific. He never killed an inoffensive animal or a small bird. Though

he was no longer young, he was said to possess prodigious strength: he

lent a hand to any one who needed it, raised a fallen horse, put his

shoulder to a wheel stuck in the mud, or stopped a runaway bull by the

horns. His pockets were always full of half-pence when he went out,

and empty when he came home; whenever he passed through a village,

the ragged children ran merrily after him, and surrounded him like a

swarm of gnats. It was supposed that he must have formerly lived a

rustic life, for he had all sorts of useful secrets which he taught the

peasants. He showed them how to destroy blight in wheat by sprinkling

the granary and pouring into the cracks of the boards a solution of

common salt, and to get rid of weevils by hanging up everywhere, on the

walls and roots, flowering orviot. He had recipes to extirpate from

arable land tares and other parasitic plants which injure wheat, and

would defend a rabbit hutch from rats by the mere smell of a little

Guinea pig, which he placed in it.

One day he saw some countrymen very busy in tearing up nettles; he

looked at the pile of uprooted and already withered plants and said:

"They are dead, and yet they are good if you know how to use them.

When nettles are young, the tops are an excellent vegetable. When

they are old, they have threads and fibre like hemp and flax. When

chopped up, nettles are good for fowls; when pounded, excellent for

horned cattle. Nettle-seed mixed with the food renders the coats of

cattle shining, and the root mixed with salt produces a fine yellow

color. The nettle is also excellent hay, which can be mown twice; and

what does it require? A little earth, no care, and no cultivation.

The only thing is that the seed falls as it ripens, and is difficult

to garner. If a little care were taken, the nettle would be useful;

but, being neglected, it becomes injurious, and is then killed. How

men resemble nettles!" He added after a moment's silence: "My friends,

remember this,--there are no bad herbs or bad men; there are only bad

cultivators."

The children also loved him, because he could make them pretty little

toys of straw and cocoa-nut shells. When he saw a church door hung with

black, he went in; he went after a funeral as other persons do after

a christening. The misfortunes of others attracted him, owing to his

great gentleness; he mingled with friends in mourning, and with the

priests round a coffin. He seemed to be fond of hearing those mournful

psalms which are full of the vision of another world. With his eye

fixed on heaven, he listened, with a species of aspiration toward all

the mysteries of Infinitude, to the sad voice singing on the brink of

the obscure abyss of death. He did a number of good actions, while as

careful to hide them as if they were bad. He would quietly at night

enter houses, and furtively ascend the stairs. A poor fellow, on

returning to his garret, would find that his door had been opened, at

times forced, during his absence; the man would cry that a robber had

been there, but when he entered, the first thing he saw was a gold coin

left on the table. The robber who had been there was Father Madeleine.

He was affable and sad: people said, "There is a rich man who does not

look proud: a lucky man who does not look happy." Some persons asserted

that he was a mysterious character, and declared that no one ever

entered his bed-room, which was a real anchorite's cell, furnished with

winged hour-glasses and embellished with cross-bones and death's-heads.

This was so often repeated that some elegant and spiteful ladies of

M---- came to him one day, and said, "Monsieur le Maire, _do_ show us

your bed-room, for people say that it is a grotto." He smiled and led

them straightway to the "grotto;" they were terribly punished for their

curiosity, as it was a bed-room merely containing mahogany furniture

as ugly as all furniture of that sort, and hung with a paper at twelve

sous a roll. They could not notice anything but two double-branched

candlesticks of an antiquated pattern, standing on the mantel-piece,

and seeming to be silver, "because they were Hall-marked,"--a remark

full of the wit of small towns. People did not the less continue to

repeat, however, that no one ever entered this bed-room, and that

it was a hermitage, a hole, a tomb. They also whispered that he had

immense sums lodged with Lafitte, and with this peculiarity that things

were always at his immediate disposal, "so that," they added, "M.

Madeleine could go any morning to Lafitte's, sign a receipt, and carry

off his two or three millions of francs in ten minutes." In reality,

these "two or three millions" were reduced, as we have said, to six

hundred and thirty or forty thousand francs.

CHAPTER IV.

M. MADELEINE GOES INTO MOURNING.

At the beginning of 1821, the papers announced the decease of M.

Myriel, Bishop of D----, "surnamed Monseigneur Welcome," who had died

in the odor of sanctity at the age of eighty-two. The Bishop of D----,

to add here a detail omitted by the papers, had been blind for several

years, and was satisfied to be blind as his sister was by his side.

Let us say parenthetically that to be blind and to be loved is one

of the most strangely exquisite forms of happiness upon this earth,

where nothing is perfect. To have continually at your side a wife, a

sister, a daughter, a charming being, who is there because you have

need of her, and because she cannot do without you; to know yourself

indispensable to a woman who is necessary to you; to be able constantly

to gauge her affection by the amount of her presence which she gives

you, and to say to yourself: "She devotes all her time to me because I

possess her entire heart;" to see her thoughts in default of her face;

to prove the fidelity of a being in the eclipse of the world; to catch

the rustling of a dress like the sound of wings; to hear her come and

go, leave the room, return, talk, sing, and then to dream that you

are the centre of those steps, those words, those songs; to manifest

at every moment your own attraction, and feel yourself powerful in

proportion to your weakness; to become in darkness and through darkness

the planet round which this angel gravitates,--but few felicities equal

this. The supreme happiness of life is the conviction of being loved

for yourself, or, more correctly speaking, loved in spite of yourself;

and this conviction the blind man has. In this distress to be served is

to be caressed. Does he want for anything? No. When you possess love,

you have not lost the light. And what a love! a love entirely made of

virtues. There is no blindness where there is certainty: the groping

soul seeks a soul and finds it, and this found and tried soul is a

woman. A hand supports you, it is hers; a mouth touches your forehead,

it is hers; you hear a breathing close to you, it is she.

To have everything she has, from her worship to her pity, to be never

left, to have this gentle weakness to succor you, to lean on this

unbending reed, to touch providence with her hands, and be able to

take her in your arms: oh! what heavenly rapture is this! The heart,

that obscure celestial flower, begins to expand mysteriously, and you

would not exchange this shadow for all the light! The angel soul is

thus necessarily there; if she go away, it is to return; she disappears

like a dream, and reappears like reality. You feel heat approaching

you, it is she. You overflow with serenity, ecstasy, and gayety; you

are a sunbeam in the night. And then the thousand little attentions,

the nothings which are so enormous in this vacuum! The most ineffable

accents of the human voice employed to lull you, and taking the place

of the vanished universe. You are caressed with the soul: you see

nothing, but you feel yourself adored; it is a paradise of darkness.

It was from this paradise that Monseigneur Welcome had passed to the

other. The announcement of his death was copied by the local paper

of M----, and on the next day Monsieur Madeleine appeared dressed

in black, with crape on his hat. The mourning was noticed in the

town, and people gossiped about it, for it seemed to throw a gleam,

over M. Madeleine's origin. It was concluded that he was somehow

connected with the Bishop. "He is in mourning for the Bishop," was

said in drawing-rooms; this added inches to M. Madeleine's stature,

and suddenly gave him a certain consideration in the noble world of

M----. The microscopic Faubourg St. Germain of the town thought about

putting an end to the Coventry of M. Madeleine, the probable relation

of a bishop, and M. Madeleine remarked the promotion he had obtained in

the increased love of the old ladies, and the greater amount of smiles

from the young. One evening a lady belonging to this little great

world, curious by right of seniority, ventured to say, "M. le Maire is

doubtless a cousin of the late Bishop of D----?"

He answered, "No, Madame."

"But," the dowager went on, "you wear mourning for him."

"In my youth I was a footman in his family," was the answer.

Another thing noticed was, that when a young Savoyard passed through

the town, looking for chimneys to sweep, the Mayor sent for him, asked

his name, and gave him money. The Savoyard boys told each other of

this, and a great many passed through M----.

CHAPTER V.

VAGUE FLASHES ON THE HORIZON.

By degrees and with time all the opposition died out; at first there

had been calumnies against M. Madeleine,--a species of law which all

rising men undergo; then it was only backbiting; then it was only

malice; and eventually all this faded away. The respect felt for him

was complete, unanimous, and cordial, and the moment arrived in 1821

when the name of the Mayor was uttered at M---- with nearly the same

accent as "Monseigneur the Bishop" had been said at D---- in 1815.

People came for ten leagues round to consult M. Madeleine; he settled

disputes, prevented lawsuits, and reconciled enemies. Everybody was

willing to accept him as arbiter, and it seemed as if he had the book

of natural law for his soul. It was a sort of contagious veneration,

which in six or seven years spread all over the country-side.

Only one man in the town and bailiwick resisted this contagion, and

whatever M. Madeleine might do, remained rebellious to it, as if a sort

of incorruptible and imperturbable instinct kept him on his guard.

It would appear, in fact, as if there is in certain men a veritable

bestial instinct, though pure and honest as all instincts are, which

creates sympathies and antipathies; which fatally separates one nature

from another; which never hesitates; which is not troubled, is never

silent, and never contradicts itself; which is clear in its obscurity,

infallible, imperious; refractory to all the counsels of intelligence

and all the solvents of the reason, and which, whatever the way in

which destinies are made, surely warns the man-dog of the man-cat,

and the man-fox of the presence of the man-lion. It often happened

when M. Madeleine passed along a street, calmly, kindly, and greeted

by the blessings of all, that a tall man, dressed in an iron-gray

great-coat, armed with a thick cane, and wearing a hat with turned-down

brim, turned suddenly and looked after him till he disappeared;

folding his arms, shaking his head, and raising his upper lip with the

lower as high as his nose, a sort of significant grimace, which may

be translated,--"Who is that man? I am certain that I have seen him

somewhere. At any rate, I am not his dupe."

This person, who was grave, with an almost menacing gravity, was one

of those men who, though only noticed for a moment, preoccupy the

observer. His name was Javert, and he belonged to the police, and

performed at M---- the laborious but useful duties of an inspector. He

had not seen Madeleine's beginning, for he was indebted for the post

he occupied to the Secretary of Count Angle, at that time Prefect of

Police at Paris. When Javert arrived at M----, the great manufacturer's

fortune was made, and Father Madeleine had become Monsieur Madeleine.

Some police officers have a peculiar face, which is complicated by an

air of baseness, blended with an air of authority. Javert had this

face, less the baseness. In our conviction, if souls were visible,

we should distinctly see the strange fact that every individual of

the human species corresponds to some one of the species of animal

creation; and we might occurred to the thinker, that, from the oyster

to the eagle, from the hog to the tiger, all animals are in man, and

that each of them is in a man; at times several of them at once.

Animals are nothing else than the figures of our virtues and our vices,

wandering before our eyes, the visible phantoms of our souls. God shows

these to us in order to make us reflect; but, as animals are only

shadows, God has not made them capable of education in the complete

sense of the term, for of what use would it be? On the other hand, our

souls being realities and having an end of their own, God has endowed

them with intelligence; that is to say, possible education. Social

education, properly carried out, can always draw out of a soul, no

matter its nature, the utility which it contains.

Now, if the reader will admit with me for a moment that in every man

there is one of the animal species of creation, it will be easy for

us to say what Javert the policeman was. The Asturian peasants are

convinced that in every litter of wolves there is a dog which is killed

by the mother, for, otherwise, when it grew it would devour the other

whelps. Give a human face to this dog-son of a she-wolf, and we shall

have Javert. He was born in prison; his mother was a fortune-teller,

whose husband was at the galleys. When he grew up he thought that he

was beyond the pale of society, and despaired of ever entering it. He

noticed that society inexorably keeps at bay two classes of men,--those

who attack it, and those who guard it; he had only a choice between

these two classes, and at the same time felt within him a rigidness,

regularity, and probity, combined with an inexpressible hatred of the

race of Bohemians to which he belonged. He entered the police, got on,

and at the age of forty was an inspector. In his youth he was engaged

in the Southern Bagnes.

Before going further, let us explain the words "human face" which we

applied just now to Javert. His human face consisted of a stub-nose,

with two enormous nostrils, toward which enormous whiskers mounted on

his cheeks. You felt uncomfortable the first time that you saw these

two forests and these two caverns. When Javert laughed, which was rare

and terrible, his thin lips parted, and displayed, not only his teeth,

but his gums, and a savage flat curl formed round his nose, such as is

seen on the muzzle of a wild beast. Javert when serious was a bull-dog;

when he laughed he was a tiger. To sum up, he had but little skull

and plenty of jaw; his hair hid his forehead and fell over his brows;

he had between his eyes a central and permanent frown, like a star of

anger, an obscure glance, a pinched-up and formidable mouth, and an air

of ferocious command.

This man was made up of two very simple and relatively excellent

feelings, but which he almost rendered bad by exaggerating

them,--respect for authority and hatred of rebellion; and in his

eyes, robbery, murder, and every crime were only forms of rebellion.

He enveloped in a species of blind faith everybody in the service

of the State, from the Prime Minister down to the game-keeper. He

covered with contempt, aversion, and disgust, every one who had once

crossed the legal threshold of evil. He was absolute, and admitted

of no exceptions; on one side he said: "A functionary cannot be

mistaken, a magistrate can do no wrong;" on the other he said: "They

are irremediably lost: no good can come of them." He fully shared the

opinion of those extreme minds that attribute to the human law some

power of making or verifying demons, and that place a Styx at the

bottom of society. He was stoical, stern, and austere; a sad dreamer,

and humble yet haughty, like all fanatics. His glance was a gimlet,

for it was cold and piercing. His whole life was composed in the two

words, watching and overlooking. He had introduced the straight line

into what is the most tortuous thing in the world; he was conscious of

his usefulness, had religious respect for his duties, and was a spy

as well as another is a priest. Woe to the wretch who came into his

clutches! he would have arrested his father if escaping from prison,

and denounced his mother had she broken her ban. And he would have

done it with that sort of inner satisfaction which virtue produces.

With all this he spent a life of privation, isolation, self-denial,

chastity. He was the implacable duty, the police comprehended as the

Spartans comprehended Sparta, a pitiless watchman, a savage integrity,

a marble-hearted spy, a Brutus contained in a Vidocq.

Javert's entire person expressed the man who spies and hides himself.

The mystic school of Joseph de Maîstre, which at this epoch was

seasoning with high cosmogony what were called the ultra journals,

would not have failed to say that Javert was a symbol. His forehead

could not be seen, for it was hidden by his hat; his eyes could not

be seen, because they were lost under his eye-brows; his chin was

plunged into his cravat, his hands were covered by his cuffs, and his

cane was carried under his coat. But when the opportunity arrived,

there could be seen suddenly emerging from all this shadow, as from an

ambush, an angular, narrow forehead, a fatal glance, a menacing chin,

enormous hands, and a monstrous rattan. In his leisure moments, which

were few, he read, though he hated books, and this caused him not to

be utterly ignorant, as could be noticed through a certain emphasis

in his language. As we have said, he had no vice; when satisfied with

himself, he indulged in a pinch of snuff, and that was his connecting

link with humanity. Our readers will readily understand that Javert was

the terror of all that class whom the yearly statistics of the minister

of justice designate under the rubric--vagabonds. The name of Javert,

if uttered, set them to flight; the face of Javert, if seen, petrified

them. Such was this formidable man.

Javert was like an eye ever fixed on M. Madeleine, an eye fall of

suspicion and conjectures. M. Madeleine noticed it in the end; but he

considered it a matter of insignificance. He did not even ask Javert

his motive, he neither sought nor shunned him, and endured his annoying

glance without appearing to notice it. He treated Javert like every one

else, easily and kindly. From some remarks that dropped from Javert, it

was supposed that he had secretly sought, with that curiosity belonging

to the breed, and in which there is as much instinct as will, all the

previous traces which Father Madeleine might have left. He appeared to

know, and sometimes said covertly, that some one had obtained certain

information in a certain district about a certain family which had

disappeared. Once he happened to say, talking to himself, "I believe

that I have got him;" then he remained thoughtful for three days

without saying a word. It seems that the thread which he fancied he

held was broken. However, there cannot be any theory really infallible

in a human creature, and it is the peculiarity of instinct that it

can be troubled, thrown out, and routed. If not, it would be superior

to intelligence, and the brute would have a better light than man.

Javert was evidently somewhat disconcerted by M. Madeleine's complete

naturalness and calmness. One day, however, his strange manner seemed

to produce an impression on M. Madeleine. The occasion was as follows.

CHAPTER VI.

FATHER FAUCHELEVENT.

When M. Madeleine was passing one morning through an unpaved lane

in the town, he heard a noise and saw a group at some distance, to

which he walked up. An old man, known as Father Fauchelevent, had

fallen under his cart, and his horse was lying on the ground. This

Fauchelevent was one of the few enemies M. Madeleine still had at this

time. When Madeleine came to these parts, Fauchelevent, a tolerably

well-educated peasant, was doing badly in business; and he saw the

simple workman grow rich, while he, a master, was being ruined. This

filled him with jealousy, and he had done all in his power, on every

possible occasion, to injure Madeleine. Then bankruptcy came, and in

his old days, having only a horse and cart left, and no family, he

turned carter to earn a living.

The horse had both legs broken and could not get up, while the old man

was entangled between the wheels. The fall had been so unfortunate,

that the whole weight of the cart was pressing on his chest, and

it was heavily loaded. Fauchelevent uttered lamentable groans, and

attempts had been made, though in vain, to draw him out; any irregular

effort, any clumsy help or shock, might kill him. It was impossible to

extricate him except by raising the cart from below, and Javert, who

came up at the moment of the accident, had sent to fetch a jack. When

M. Madeleine approached, the mob made way respectfully.

"Help!" old Fauchelevent cried; "is there no good soul who will save an

old man?"

M. Madeleine turned to the spectators.

"Have you a jack?"

"They have gone to fetch one," a peasant answered.

"How soon will it be here?"

"Well, the nearest is at Flachot the blacksmith's, but it cannot be

brought here under a good quarter of an hour."

"A quarter of an hour!" Madeleine exclaimed.

It had rained on the previous night, the ground was soft, the cart sunk

deeper into it every moment, and more and more pressed the old man's

chest. It was evident that his ribs would be broken within five minutes.

"It is impossible to wait a quarter of an hour," said M. Madeleine to

the peasants who were looking on.

"We must."

"But do you not see that the cart is sinking into the ground?"

"Hang it! so it is."

"Listen to me," Madeleine continued; "there is still room enough for

a man to slip under the cart and raise it with his back. It will only

take half a minute, and the poor man can be drawn out. Is there any one

here who has strong loins? There are five louis to be earned."

No one stirred.

"Ten louis," Madeleine said.

His hearers looked down, and one of them muttered, "A man would have to

be deucedly strong, and, besides, he would run a risk of being smashed."

"Come," Madeleine began again, "twenty louis." The same silence.

"It is not the good-will they are deficient in," a voice cried.

M. Madeleine turned and recognized Javert: he had noticed him when he

came up. Javert continued,--

"It is the strength. A man would have to be tremendously strong to lift

a cart like that with his back."

Then, looking fixedly at M. Madeleine, he continued, laying a marked

stress on every word he uttered,--

"Monsieur Madeleine, I never knew but _one_ man capable of doing what

you ask."

Madeleine started, but Javert continued carelessly, though without

taking his eyes off Madeleine,--

"He was a galley-slave."

"Indeed!" said Madeleine.

"At the Toulon Bagne."

Madeleine turned pale; all this while the cart was slowly settling

down, and Father Fauchelevent was screaming,--

"I am choking: it is breaking my ribs: a jack! something--oh!"

Madeleine looked around him.

"Is there no one here willing to earn twenty louis and save this poor

old man's life?"

No one stirred, and Javert repeated,--

"I never knew but one man capable of acting as a jack, and it was that

convict."

"Oh, it is crushing me!" the old man yelled.

Madeleine raised his head, met Javert's falcon eye still fixed on him,

gazed at the peasants, and sighed sorrowfully. Then, without saying

a word, he fell on his knees, and, ere the crowd had time to utter a

cry, was under the cart. There was a frightful moment of expectation

and silence. Madeleine almost lying flat under the tremendous weight,

twice tried in vain to bring his elbows up to his knees. The peasants

shouted: "Father Madeleine, come out!" And old Fauchelevent himself

said: "Monsieur Madeleine, go away! I must die, so leave me; you will

be killed too."

Madeleine made no answer; the spectators gasped; the wheels had sunk

deeper, and it was now almost impossible for him to get out from under

the cart. All at once the enormous mass shook, the cart slowly rose,

and the wheels half emerged from the rut. A stifled voice could be

heard crying, "Make haste, help!" It was Madeleine, who had made a last

effort. They rushed forward, for the devotion of one man had restored

strength and courage to all. The cart was lifted by twenty arms, and

old Fauchelevent was saved. Madeleine rose; he was livid, although

dripping with perspiration: his clothes were torn and covered with

mud. The old man kissed his knees, and called him his savior, while

Madeleine had on his face a strange expression of happy and celestial

suffering, and turned his placid eye on Javert, who was still looking

at him.

[Illustration: FATHER FAUCHELEVENT.]

CHAPTER VII

FAUCHELEVENT BECOMES A GARDENER AT PARIS.

Fauchelevent had put out his knee-cap in his fall, and Father Madeleine

had him carried to an infirmary he had established for his workmen

in his factory, and which was managed by two sisters of charity. The

next morning the old man found a thousand-franc note by his bed-side,

with a line in M. Madeleine's handwriting, "Payment for your cart and

horse, which I have bought:" the cart was smashed and the horse dead.

Fauchelevent recovered, but his leg remained stiff, and, hence M.

Madeleine, by the recommendation of the sisters and his curé, procured

him a situation as gardener at a convent in the St. Antoine quarter of

Paris.

Some time after, M. Madeleine was appointed Mayor; the first time

Javert saw him wearing the scarf which gave him all authority in the

town, he felt that sort of excitement a dog would feel that scented a

wolf in its master's clothes. From this moment he avoided him as much

as he could, and when duty imperiously compelled him, and he could

not do otherwise than appear before the Mayor, he addressed him with

profound respect.

The prosperity created in M---- by Father Madeleine had, in addition

to the visible signs we have indicated, another symptom, which, though

not visible, was not the less significant, for it is one that never

deceives: when the population is suffering, when work is scarce and

trade bad, tax-payers exhaust and exceed the time granted them, and

the State spends a good deal of money in enforcing payment. When

work abounds, when the country is happy and rich, the taxes are paid

cheerfully, and cost the State little. We may say that wretchedness

and the public exchequer have an infallible thermometer in the cost

of collecting the taxes. In seven years these costs had been reduced

three-fourths in the arrondissement of M----, which caused it to be

frequently quoted by M. de Villele, at that time Minister of Finances.

Such was the state of the town when Fantine returned to it. No one

remembered her, but luckily the door of M. Madeleine's factory was like

a friendly face; she presented herself at it, and was admitted to the

female shop. As the trade was quite new to Fantine, she was awkward at

it and earned but small wages; but that was enough, for she had solved

the problem,--she was earning her livelihood.

CHAPTER VIII.

MADAME VICTURNIEN SPENDS THIRTY FRANCS ON MORALITY.

When Fantine saw that she could earn her own living, she had a moment

of joy. To live honestly by her own toil, what a favor of Heaven! A

taste for work really came back to her: she bought a looking-glass,

delighted in seeing in it her youth, her fine hair and fine teeth;

forgot many things, only thought of Cosette, and her possible future,

and was almost happy. She hired a small room and furnished it, on

credit, to be paid for out of her future earnings,--this was a relic of

her irregular habits.

Not being able to say that she was married, she was very careful not

to drop a word about her child. At the outset, as we have seen, she

punctually paid the Thénardiers; and as she could only sign her name,

she was compelled to write to them through the agency of a public

writer. It was noticed that she wrote frequently. It was beginning

to be whispered in the shop that Fantine "wrote letters," and was

"carrying on."

No one spies the actions of persons so much as those whom they do not

concern. Why does this gentleman never come till nightfall? Why does

So-and-So never hang up his key on Thursdays? Why does he always take

back streets? Why does Madame always get out of her hackney coach

before reaching her house? Why does she send out to buy a quire of

note-paper, when she has a desk full? and so on. There are people

who, in order to solve these inquiries, which are matters of utter

indifference to them, spend more money, lavish more time, and take

more trouble, than would be required for ten good deeds: and they do

it gratuitously for the pleasure, and they are only paid for their

curiosity with curiosity. They will follow a gentleman or a lady

for whole days, will stand sentry at the corner of a street or in a

gateway at night in the cold and rain; corrupt messengers, intoxicate

hackney coachmen and footmen, buy a lady's-maid, and make a purchase

of a porter,--why? For nothing; for a pure desire to see, know, and

find out--it is a simple itch for talking. And frequently these

secrets, when made known, these mysteries published, these enigmas

brought to daylight, entail catastrophes, duels, bankruptcies, ruin

of families, to the great delight of those who found it all out,

without any personal motives, through pure instinct. It is a sad

thing. Some persons are wicked solely through a desire to talk, and

this conversation, which is gossip in the drawing-room, scandal in the

ante-room, is like those chimneys which consume wood rapidly; they

require a great deal of combustible, and this combustible is their

neighbor.

Fantine was observed then, and besides, more than one girl was jealous

of her light hair and white teeth. It was noticed that she often wiped

away a tear in the shop; it was when she was thinking of her child,

perhaps of the man she had loved. It is a painful labor to break off

all the gloomy connecting links with the past. It was a fact that

she wrote, at least twice a month, and always to the same address,

and paid the postage. They managed to obtain the address: "Monsieur

Thénardier, Publican, Montfermeil." The public writer, who could not

fill his stomach with wine without emptying his pocket of secrets, was

made to talk at the wine-shop; and, in short, it was known that Fantine

had a child. A gossip undertook a journey to Montfermeil, spoke to

the Thénardiers, and on her return said, "I do not begrudge my thirty

francs, for I have seen the child."

The gossip who did this was a Gorgon of the name of Madame Victurnien,

guardian and portress of everybody's virtue. She was fifty-six years

of age, and covered the mask of ugliness with the mask of old age.

Astounding to say, this old woman had once been young; in her youth,

in '93, she had married a monk, who escaped from the cloisters in a

red cap, and passed over from the Bernardines to the Jacobins. She was

dry, crabbed, sharp, thorny, and almost venomous, while remembering

the monk whose widow she was and who had considerably tamed her. At

the Restoration she had turned bigot, and so energetically, that the

priests forgave her her monk. She had a small estate which she left

with considerable pallor to a religious community, and she was very

welcome at the Episcopal Palace of Arras. This Madame Victurnien, then,

went to Montfermeil, and when she returned, said, "I have seen the

child."

All this took time, and Fantine had been more than a year at the

factory, when one morning the forewoman handed her 50 francs in the

Mayor's name, and told her that she was no longer engaged, and had

better leave the town, so the Mayor said. It was in this very month

that the Thénardiers, after asking for 12 francs instead of 7, raised a

claim for 15 instead of 12. Fantine was startled; she could not leave

the town, for she owed her rent and for her furniture, and 50 francs

would not pay those debts. She stammered a few words of entreaty, but

the forewoman intimated to her that she must leave the shop at once;

moreover, Fantine was but an indifferent workwoman. Crushed by shame

more than disgrace, she left the factory, and returned to her room: her

fault then was now known to all! She did not feel the strength in her

to say a word; she was advised to see the Mayor, but did not dare do

so. The Mayor gave her 50 francs because he was kind, and discharged

her because he was just; and she bowed her head to the sentence.

CHAPTER IX.