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DOUBLE FOURSOME

IN THIS YEAR, 1817, four young Parisians played “a good joke.” These Parisians were, one from Toulouse, another from Limoges, the third from Cahors, and the fourth from Montauban; but they were students, and to say student is to say Parisian; to study in Paris is to be born in Paris.

These young men were unremarkable; everybody has seen such persons, the four first comers will serve as samples; neither good nor bad, neither learned nor ignorant, neither talented nor stupid; handsome in that charming April of life which we call twenty. They were four run-of-the-mill Oscars; for at this time, Arthurs were not yet in existence. Burn the perfumes of Arabia in his honour, exclaims the romance. Oscar approaches! Oscar, I am about to see him! Ossian was in fashion, elegance was Scandinavian and Caledonian; the pure English style did not prevail till later, and the first of the Arthurs, Wellington, had but just won the victory of Waterloo.

The first of these Oscars was called Félix Tholomyès, of Toulouse; the second, Listolier, of Cahors; the third, Fameuil, of Limoges; and the last, Blacheville, of Montauban. Of course each had his mistress. Blacheville loved Favourite, so called, because she had been in England; Listolier adored Dahlia, who had taken the name of a flower as her nom de guerre, Fameuil idolised Zéphine, the diminutive of Josephine, and Tholomyès had Fantine, called the Blonde, on account of her beautiful hair, the colour of the sun. Favourite, Dahlia, Zéphine, and Fantine were four enchanting girls, perfumed and sparkling, something of workwomen still, since they had not wholly given up the needle, agitated by love-affairs, yet preserving on their countenances a remnant of the serenity of labour, and in their souls that flower of purity, which in woman survives the first fall. One of the four was called the child, because she was the youngest; and another was called the old one—the Old One was twenty-three. To conceal nothing, the three first were more experienced, more heedless, and better versed in the ways of the world than Fantine, the Blonde, who was still in her first illusion.

The young men were comrades, the young girls were friends. Such loves are always accompanied by such friendships.

Wisdom and philosophy are two things; a proof of which is that, with all necessary reservations for these little, irregular households, Favourite, Zéphine, and Dahlia, were philosophical, and Fantine was wise.

“Wise!” you will say, and Tholomyès? Solomon would answer that love is a part of wisdom. We content ourselves with saying that the love of Fantine was a first, an only, a faithful love.

She was the only one of the four who had been addressed as “tu” by but one.^u

Fantine was one of those beings which are brought forth from the heart of the people. Sprung from the most unfathomable depths of social darkness, she bore on her brow the mark of the anonymous and unknown. She was born at M—on M—. Who were her parents? None could tell, she had never known either father or mother. She was called Fantine—why so? because she had never been known by any other name. At the time of her birth, the Directory was still in existence.^v She could have no family name, for she had no family; she could have no baptismal name, for then there was no church. She was named at the pleasure of the first passer-by who found her, a mere infant, straying barefoot in the streets. She received a name as she received the water from the clouds on her head when it rained. She was called little Fantine. Nobody knew anything more of her. Such was the manner in which this human being had come into life. At the age of ten, Fantine left the city and went to work among the tenant farmers of the suburbs. At fifteen, she came to Paris, to “seek her fortune.” Fantine was beautiful and remained pure as long as she could. She was a pretty blonde with fine teeth. She had gold and pearls for her dowry; but the gold was on her head and the pearls in her mouth.

She worked to live; then, also to live, for the heart too has its hunger, she loved.

She loved Tholomyès.

To him, it was a fling; to her a passion. The streets of the Latin Quarter, which swarm with students and grisettes, saw the beginning of this dream.^w Fantine, in those labyrinths of the hill of the Pantheon, where so many affairs are knotted and unloosed, long fled from Tholomyès, but in such a way as always to meet him again. There is a way of avoiding a person which resembles a search. In short, the eclogue took place.^x

Blacheville, Listolier, and Fameuil formed a sort of group of which Tholomyès was the head. He was the wit of the company.

Tholomyès was an old student of the old style; he was rich, having an income of four thousand francs—a splendid scandal on the Montagne Sainte-Geneviève. He was a good liver, thirty years old and ill preserved. He was wrinkled, his teeth were broken, and he was beginning to show signs of baldness, of which he said, gaily: “The head at thirty, the knees at forty.” His digestion was not good, and he had a weeping eye. But in proportion as his youth died out, his gaiety increased; he replaced his teeth by jests, his hair by joy, his health by irony, and his weeping eye was always laughing. He was dilapidated, but covered with flowers. His youth, decamping long before its time, was beating a retreat in good order, bursting with laughter and everyone was fooled. He had had a play refused by the Vaudeville; he wrote poems now and then on any subject; moreover, he expressed skepticism about everything with a superior air—a great strength in the eyes of the weak. So, being bald and ironical, he was the leader. Can the word iron be the root from which irony is derived?‡

One day, Tholomyès took the other three aside, and said to them with an oracular gesture:

“For nearly a year, Fantine, Dahlia, Zéphine, and Favourite have been asking us to give them a surprise; we have solemnly promised them one. They are constantly reminding us of it, me especially. Just as the old women at Naples cry to Saint January, ‘Faccia gialluta, fa o miracolo, yellow face, do your miracle,’ our pretty ones are always saying: ‘Tholomyès, when are you going to give birth to your surprise?’ At the same time, our parents are asking us to come visit. It’s a bore on both sides. It seems to me the time has come. Let us talk it over.”

Upon this, Tholomyès lowered his voice, and mysteriously articulated something so ludicrous that a prolonged and enthusiastic sniggering arose from the four throats at once, and Blacheville exclaimed: “What an idea!”

An ale-house, filled with smoke, was before them; they entered and the rest of their conference was lost in its shadows.

The result of this mystery was a brilliant pleasure party, which took place on the following Sunday, the four young men inviting the four young girls.