1
ONE MOTHER MEETS ANOTHER
THERE WAS, during the first quarter of the present century, at Montfermeil, near Paris, a sort of tavern; it is not there now. It was kept by a man and his wife, named Thénardier and was situated in the Boulanger Alley. Above the door, nailed flat against the wall, was a board, upon which something was painted that looked like a man carrying on his back another man wearing the heavy epaulettes of a general, gilt and with large silver stars; red blotches typified blood; the remainder of the picture was smoke, and probably represented a battle. Beneath was this inscription: THE SERGEANT OF WATERLOO PLACE.
Nothing is commoner than a cart or wagon before the door of an inn; nevertheless the vehicle, or more properly speaking, the fragment of a vehicle which obstructed the street in front of the Sergeant of Waterloo one evening in the spring of 1818, certainly would have attracted by its bulk the attention of any painter who might have been passing.
It was the fore-carriage of one of those drays for carrying heavy articles, used in wooded countries for transporting beams and trunks of trees: it consisted of a massive iron axle-tree with a pivot to which a heavy pole was attached, and which was supported by two enormous wheels. As a whole, it was squat, crushing, and misshapen: it might have been fancied a gigantic gun-carriage.
The ruts in the roads had covered the wheels, rims, hubs, axle, and the pole with a coating of hideous yellow-hued mud, similar in tint to that with which cathedrals are sometimes decorated. The wood had disappeared beneath mud; and the iron beneath rust.
Under the axle-tree hung festooned a huge chain fit for a Goliath of the galleys.
The middle of the chain was hanging quite near the ground under the axle; and upon the bend, as on a swinging rope, two little girls were seated that evening in exquisite grouping, the smaller, eighteen months old, in the lap of the larger, who was two years and a half old.
A handkerchief carefully knotted kept them from falling. A mother, looking upon this frightful chain, had said: “Ah! there is a plaything for my children!”
The radiant children, picturesquely and tastefully decked, might be fancied two roses twining the rusty iron, with their triumphantly sparkling eyes, and their blooming, laughing faces. One was a rosy blonde, the other a brunette; their artless faces were two ravishing surprises; the perfume that was shed upon the air by a flowering shrub near by seemed to emanate from them; the smaller one was showing her pretty little body with the chaste indecency of babyhood. Above and around these delicate heads moulded in happiness and bathed in light, the gigantic carriage, black with rust and almost frightful with its entangled curves and abrupt angles, arched like the mouth of a cavern.
The mother, a woman whose appearance was rather forbidding, but touching at this moment, was seated a few steps away on the sill of the inn, swinging the two children by a long string, while she brooded them with her eyes for fear of accident with that animal but heavenly expression peculiar to maternity. At each vibration the hideous links uttered a creaking noise like an angry cry; the little ones were in ecstasies, the setting sun mingled in the joy, and nothing could be more charming than this caprice of chance which made of a Titan’s chain a swing for cherubim.
While rocking the babes the mother sang with a voice out of tune a then popular song:
“Il le faut, disait un guerrier.”
Her song and watching her children prevented her hearing and seeing what was passing in the street.
Some one, however, had approached her as she was beginning the first couplet of the song, and suddenly she heard a voice say quite near her ear:
“You have two pretty children there, madame.” answered the mother, continuing her song; then she turned her head.
“A la belle et tendre Imogine,”
A woman was before her at a little distance; she also had a child, which she bore in her arms.
She was carrying in addition a large carpet-bag, which seemed heavy. This woman’s child was one of the divinest beings that can be imagined: a little girl of two or three years. She might have entered the lists with the other little ones for coquetry of attire, she wore a head-dress of fine linen; ribbons at her shoulders and Valenciennes lace on her cap. The folds of her skirt were raised enough to show her plump fine white leg; she was charmingly rosy and healthful. The pretty little creature gave one a desire to bite her cherry cheeks. We can say nothing of her eyes except that they must have been very large, and were fringed with superb lashes. She was asleep.
She was sleeping in the absolutely confiding slumber peculiar to her age. Mothers’ arms are made of tenderness, and sweet sleep blesses the child who lies therein.
As to the mother, she seemed poor and sad; she had the appearance of a working woman who is seeking to return to the life of a peasant. She was young,—and pretty? It was possible, but in that garb beauty could not be displayed. Her hair, one blonde mesh of which had fallen, seemed very thick, but it was severely fastened up beneath an ugly, close, narrow nun’s head-dress, tied under the chin. Laughing shows fine teeth when one has them, but she did not laugh. Her eyes seemed not to have been tearless for a long time. She was pale, and looked very weary, and somewhat sick. She gazed upon her child, sleeping in her arms, with that peculiar look which only a mother possesses who nurses her own child. Her form was clumsily masked by a large blue handkerchief folded across her bosom. Her hands were tanned and spotted with freckles, the forefinger hardened and pricked with the needle; she wore a coarse brown delaine mantle, a calico dress, and large heavy shoes. It was Fantine.
Yes, Fantine. Hard to recognise, yet on looking attentively, you saw that she still retained her beauty. A sad line, such as is formed by irony, had marked her right cheek. As to her toilette—that airy toilette of muslin and ribbons which seemed as if made of gaiety, folly, and music, full of baubles and perfumed with lilacs—that had vanished like the beautiful sparkling hoarfrost, which we take for diamonds in the sun; they melt, and leave the branch dreary and black.
Ten months had slipped away since “the good farce.”
What had happened during these ten months? We can guess.
After recklessness, trouble. Fantine had lost sight of Favourite, Zéphine, and Dahlia; the tie, broken on the part of the men, was unloosed on the part of the women; they would have been astonished if any one had said a fortnight afterwards they were friends; they had no longer cause to be so. Fantine was left alone. The father of her child gone—Alas! such partings are irrevocable—she found herself absolutely isolated, with the habit of labour lost, and the taste for pleasure acquired. Led by her liaison with Tholomyès to disdain the small business that she knew how to do, she had neglected her opportunities, they were all gone. No resource. Fantine could scarcely read, and did not know how to write. She had only been taught in childhood how to sign her name. She had a letter written by a public letter writer to Tholomyès, then a second, then a third. Tholomyès had replied to none of them. One day, Fantine heard some old women saying as they saw her child: “Do people ever take such children to heart? They only shrug their shoulders at such children!” Then she thought of Tholomyès, who shrugged his shoulders at his child, and who did not take this innocent child to heart, and her heart became dark in the place that was his. What should she do? She had no one to ask. She had committed a fault; but, in the depths of her nature, we know dwelt modesty and virtue. She had a vague feeling that she was on the eve of falling into distress, of slipping into the street. She must have courage, she had it, and bore up bravely. The idea occurred to her of returning to her native village M—sur M—, there perhaps some one would know her, and give her work. Yes, but she must hide her fault. And she had a confused glimpse of the possible necessity of a separation still more painful than the first. Her heart ached, but she took her resolution. It will be seen that Fantine possessed the stern courage of life. She had already valiantly renounced her finery, was draped in calico, and had put all her silks, her gew-gaws, her ribbons, and laces on her daughter—the only vanity that remained, and that a holy one. She sold all she had, which gave her two hundred francs; when her little debts were paid, she had but about eighty left. At twenty-two years of age, on a fine spring morning, she left Paris, carrying her child on her back. He who had seen the two passing, must have pitied them. The woman had nothing in the world but this child, and this child had nothing in the world but this woman. Fantine had nursed her child; that had weakened her chest somewhat, and she coughed slightly.
We shall have no further need to speak of M. Félix Tholomyès. We will only say here, that twenty years later, under King Louis Philippe, he was a fat provincial attorney, rich and influential, a wise elector and rigid jury-man; always, however, a man of pleasure.
Towards noon, after having, for the sake of rest, travelled from time to time at a cost of three or four cents a league, in what they called then the Petites Voitures of the environs of Paris, Fantine reached Montfermeil, and stood in Boulanger Alley.
As she was passing by the Thénardier tavern, the two little children, sitting in delight on their monstrous swing, had a sort of dazzling effect upon her, and she paused before this joyous vision.
There are charms. These two little girls were one for this mother.
She beheld them with emotion. The presence of angels is a herald of paradise. She thought she saw above this inn the mysterious “HERE” of Providence. These children were evidently happy; she gazed upon them, she admired them, so much affected that at the moment when the mother was taking breath between the verses of her song, she could not help saying what we have been reading.
“You have two pretty children there, madame.”
The most ferocious animals are disarmed by caresses to their young.
The mother raised her head and thanked her and made the stranger sit down on the stone step, she herself being on the doorsill: the two women began to talk together.
“My name is Madame Thénardier,” said the mother of the two girls: “we keep this inn.”
Then going on with her song, she sang between her teeth:
“Il le faut, je suis chevalier
Et je pars pour la Palestine.”
This Madame Thénardier was a red-haired, brawny, angular woman, of the soldier’s slut type in all its horror, and, singularly enough, she had a lolling air which she had gained from novel-reading. She was a simpering, mannish woman. Old romances impressed on the imaginations of mistresses of taverns have such effects. She was still young, scarcely thirty years old. If this woman, who was seated stooping, had been upright, perhaps her towering form and her broad shoulders, those of a movable colossus, fit for a market-woman, would have dismayed the traveller, disturbed her confidence, and prevented what we have to relate. A person seated instead of standing; fate hangs on such a thread as that.
The traveller told her story, a little modified.
She said she was a working woman, and her husband was dead. Not being able to procure work in Paris she was going in search of it elsewhere ; in her own province; that she had left Paris that morning on foot, that carrying her child she had become tired, and meeting the Villemomble stage had got in; that from Villemomble she had come on foot to Montfermeil; that the child had walked a little but not much, she was so young, that she was compelled to carry her, and the jewel had fallen asleep.
And at these words she gave her daughter a passionate kiss which wakened her. The child opened its large blue eyes, like its mother‘s, and saw—what ? Nothing, everything, with that serious and sometimes severe air of little children, which is one of the mysteries of their shining innocence before our shadowy virtues. One would say that they felt themselves to be angels, and knew us to be human. Then the child began to laugh, and, although the mother restrained her, slipped to the ground, with the indomitable energy of a little one that wants to run about. All at once she perceived the two others in their swing, stopped short, and put out her tongue in token of admiration.
Mother Thénardier untied the children and took them from the swing saying:
“Play together, all three of you.”
At that age acquaintance is easy, and in a moment the little Thénardiers were playing with the new-comer, making holes in the ground to their intense delight.
This new-comer was very sprightly: the goodness of the mother is written in the gaiety of the child; she had taken a splinter of wood, which she used as a spade, and was stoutly digging a hole fit for a fly. The gravedigger’s work is charming when done by a child.
The two women continued to chat.
“What do you call your brat?”
“Cosette.”
“How old is she?”
“She is going on three years.”
“The age of my oldest.”
The three girls were grouped in an attitude of deep anxiety and bliss; a great event had occurred; a large worm had come out of the ground; they were afraid of it, and yet in ecstasies over it.
Their bright foreheads touched each other: three heads in one halo of glory.
“Children,” exclaimed the Thénardier mother; “how soon they know one another. See them! one would swear they were three sisters.”
These words were the spark which the other mother was probably awaiting. She seized the hand of Madame Thénardier and said:
“Will you keep my child for me?”
Madame Thénardier made a motion of surprise, which was neither consent nor refusal.
Cosette’s mother continued:
“You see I cannot take my child into the country. Work forbids it. With a child I could not find a place there; they are so absurd in that district. It is God who has led me before your inn. The sight of your little ones, so pretty, and clean, and happy, has overwhelmed me. I said: there is a good mother; they will be like three sisters, and then it will not be long before I come back. Will you keep my child for me?”
“I must think over it,” said Thénardier.
“I will give six francs a month.”
Here a man’s voice was heard from within:
“Not less than seven francs, and six months paid in advance.”
“Six times seven are forty-two,” said Thénardier.
“I will give it,” said the mother.
“And fifteen francs extra for the first expenses,” added the man.
“That’s fifty-seven francs,” said Madame Thénardier, and in the midst of her reckoning she sang indistinctly:
“Il le faut, disait un guerrier.”
“I will give it,” said the mother; “I have eighty francs. That will leave me enough to go into the country if I walk. I will earn some money there, and as soon as I have I will come for my little love.”
The man’s voice returned:
“Has the child a wardrobe?”
“That is my husband,” said Thénardier.
“Certainly she has, the poor darling. I knew it was your husband. And a fine wardrobe it is too, an extravagant wardrobe, everything in dozens, and silk dresses like a lady. They are there in my carpet-bag.”
“You must leave that here,” put in the man’s voice.
“Of course I shall give it to you,” said the mother; “it would be strange if I should leave my child naked.”
The face of the master appeared.
“It is all right,” said he.
The bargain was concluded. The mother passed the night at the inn, gave her money and left her child, fastened again her carpet-bag, diminished by her child’s wardrobe, and very light now, and set off next morning, expecting soon to return. These partings are arranged tranquilly, but they are full of despair.
A neighbour of the Thénardiers met this mother on her way, and came in, saying:
“I have just met a woman in the street, who was crying as if her heart would break.”
When Cosette’s mother had gone, the man said to his wife:
“That will do me for my note of 110 francs which falls due tomorrow; I was fifty francs short. Do you realize I would have received a summons? You have proved a good mousetrap with your little ones.”
“Without knowing it,” said the woman.