During the early 1800s, in the town of Montfermeil near Paris, there was an inn called The Sergeant of Waterloo, which was so named in honor of its owner. His name was Thénardier, and he and his wife ran the inn. And if the owner were to be believed, he had been a sergeant throughout the campaign of 1815 and had even conducted himself with valor. The sign over the inn was evidence of one of his “feats of arms,” for he had painted it himself. Indeed, he did know how to do a little of everything—but badly.
If the truth of the battle of Waterloo were to be told, however, Thénardier was nothing but a nocturnal prowler who walked through the blood of the battlefield at night stripping the dead of their valuables. At this particular battle, he had moved the body of an officer to higher ground in order to better see what he might steal, and in doing so had inadvertently saved the man’s life. The wounded officer, just returning to consciousness, had raised a feeble arm to briefly detain Thénardier, and said to him, “You saved my life. Who are you?”
The thief quietly answered, not wanting to be detected, “Like you, I belong to the French Army. If the enemy catches me here, I will be shot. I’ve saved your life, but now you’re on your own.”
“What is your rank, sir?” the wounded man asked.
“Sergeant.”
“And what is your name?”
“Thénardier,” was the thief’s response.
“I will not forget your name,” the officer said. “And please remember mine. It is Pontmercy.”
One evening three years later, during the spring of 1818, the Thénardiers’ two little girls were playing in the yard at the front of the inn. The older of the two, who was about two and a half years old, held her eighteen-month-old sister in her arms. The children, who were happily playing with each other, were both dressed in somewhat elegant clothing. Their eyes were bright and their clean cheeks were filled with laughter. Their mother, whose looks did not offer a very favorable first impression, stood nearby carefully watching them.
Another woman who was approaching the inn on foot held a child in her arms. She struggled somewhat, for she also carried a large bag made of carpet that seemed to be quite heavy. The woman’s child was one of the most divine creations possible to imagine. The beautiful child was a little girl appearing to be two or three years old. The child’s clothing was equally as elegant as that of the two other children playing nearby. She wore a bonnet of fine linen and lace as well as a lovely dress tied about the waist with colorful ribbons. She appeared healthy, as evidenced by her rosy cheeks. Yet all that could be said of her eyes is that they were very large with magnificent lashes, for she was sound asleep.
The child’s mother, however, appeared quite needy and poverty-stricken. She was dressed as a working-woman, but one who was on the edge of becoming a peasant once again. Her name was Fantine.
She spoke to Madame Thénardier, saying, “You have two beautiful children, madam.” The children were indeed lovely, but Fantine knew that bestowing compliments on their young could disarm even the most ferocious of creatures.
Cosette
Madame Thénardier nodded and thanked Fantine, and asked the traveler to have a seat on the bench by the door next to her. The two women then began to chat. “My name is Madame Thénardier,” said the mother of the two little girls. “My husband and I run this inn.” The woman had a rough complexion and was somewhat thin but masculine in her build. And there was a certain oddness that seemed to envelope her and that showed itself in her smirk of a smile.
As they talked, Fantine began to tell her story. She related that she was a workingwoman and that her husband was dead. It seems her work in Paris had ended and she was on her way to seek employment elsewhere, perhaps in her own native area. She had left Paris that morning and had walked most of the way. And because her child was so young, she had carried her nearly the entire time. As Fantine had done so, her little jewel had fallen asleep in her arms. Having said this, she tenderly gave her daughter a sweet kiss, which caused her to open her eyes. Those beautiful eyes were big and blue—like her mother’s. Just then the child began to laugh.
Madame Thénardier then said to all three children, “Run along and play.” Small children take to each other so easily that within a minute or so the two Thénardier children were happily playing with their visitor, digging small holes in the dirt. As the two women continued their discussion, Madame Thénardier asked, “What is your little one’s name?”
“Cosette,” Fantine responded.
“How old is she?”
“Nearly three years.”
“Oh, then she’s the age of my older child,” Madame Thénardier stated.
In the meantime, the two sisters continued playing with their new playmate as though they had known her for some time. They were playfully digging in the dirt with their heads touching one another as they laughed and giggled in glee.
“How easily and quickly young children get acquainted!” exclaimed Madame Thénardier. “One would think the three of them were sisters!”
This last remark was exactly what Fantine had been hoping to hear. She immediately seized on the statement, reached for Madame Thénardier’s hand, looked intently into her eyes, and asked, “Will you keep my child for me?”
Madame Thénardier made a quick movement in a gesture of surprise, but one that indicated neither her assent nor her refusal. Fantine continued, “You see, I cannot take Cosette to the countryside, for my work will not allow it. In fact, it nearly is impossible to find work when you have a child—people are ridiculous in the country. It was nothing but the goodness of God that caused me to pass by your inn. And once I caught sight of your lovely little children—so pretty and so clean—I was overwhelmed. I said to myself, ‘Here’s a good mother. This is the perfect situation, for these three girls will be like sisters!’ Madam, it will not be long before I return. Will you keep my child for me?”
“I must see about that,” replied Madame Thénardier.
“I will pay you six francs a month, madam.”
At this, a man’s voice from inside the inn could be heard to say, “Seven francs a month, with six months paid in advance!”
“Yes,” added Madame Thénardier. “Six times seven would be forty-two.”
“I will pay that,” agreed Fantine.
The man’s voice chimed in again, “And fifteen more francs in advance for initial expenses.”
“That makes fifty-seven francs in total,” figured Madame Thénardier. She then hummed softly as though satisfied with the numbers.
“I can pay that,” agreed Fantine once again. “I have a total of eighty francs. That will leave me enough to get to the countryside if I travel by foot. And once I earn more money there and can set some aside, I will return for my sweet daughter.”
Again the man spoke: “Your little child has an outfit?”
At this Madame Thénardier finally offered, “That is my husband speaking.”
Fantine responded to his question, “Of course she has an outfit,” and then directed a quiet comment to Madame Thénardier, saying, “Yes, I understood him to be your husband.” Continuing, she added, “Cosette is my treasure. She has more than one outfit, too! Even one that some may say is extravagantly beautiful. She has some things by the dozen, and silk gowns, like a little lady. It’s all here in my bag.”
“You must hand it all over to us,” the man said in a matter-of-fact way.
“Of course I will leave them with you,” Fantine responded. “It would be quite strange for me to take her clothes and leave Cosette naked.”
The man replied, “That’s good,” as he finally leaned outside the door, revealing his face for the first time.
With the bargain now concluded, Fantine spent the night at the inn. The following morning she handed over the money and Cosette’s clothes, and then packed her carpetbag that was now much lighter as a result. She then set out on her journey, with the intention of returning very soon.
People often arrange such things quite calmly, but this type of situation can create a tremendous sense of despair. In fact, a neighbor of the Thénardiers who saw Fantine shortly after she had left Cosette related to them, “I just saw that young woman crying so hard as she was leaving that it almost broke my heart!”
Yet after Fantine had departed, Monsieur Thénardier said to his wife, “This money will enable me to pay the note I have coming due tomorrow for 110 francs. I was short fifty francs, and without this the bailiff would have come for me. My dear, you played the mousetrap quite nicely with our little ones.”
“And without even knowing it!” said the woman with a sly smile.
Fantine, the poor mouse who had been caught in that trap, was a pitiful specimen. Yet a cat rejoices over even a lean mouse. By any human standard, the Thénardiers were dwarfs in their character in matters of truthfulness and, given the right opportunity, could be extremely cruel. When it came to other ethical traits, Madame Thénardier could have been considered to be lower than an animal, and her husband was nothing better than a corrupt scoundrel. And as they advanced through life, they were even more prone to lean in the direction of evil.
The Thénardiers’ wickedness, however, did not lead to prosperity, for their inn was in financial difficulties. Thanks to Fantine’s fifty-seven francs, Monsieur Thénardier had been able to avoid being arrested by the bailiff by paying his note on time, yet the very next month he was in need of money again. Therefore, he and his wife took little Cosette’s entire wardrobe to Paris and pawned it for sixty francs.
As soon as that money was gone, the Thénardiers began to see the little girl merely as a child they were caring for solely out of their “sense of charity” and began to treat her accordingly—not as an equal to their own daughters. Since Cosette no longer had any clothes of her own, they dressed her simply in worn-out petticoats meant to be undergarments. And even these were cast-offs from their daughters and were nothing but tattered rags by the time she wore them.
They fed Cosette whatever remained after their family had eaten. She ate somewhat better than a dog but certainly worse than a cat. In fact, the family’s dog and cat were her eating companions, for she was forced to eat with them under the table from a wooden bowl similar to theirs.
Soon Fantine had found work and somewhat established herself at Montreuil in the north of France. She wrote, or actually had someone write for her, a letter every month to the Thénardiers to inquire about Cosette. Invariably they would reply by simply saying, “Cosette is doing wonderfully well.”
At the end of the first six months, Fantine sent another seven francs for that month and then continued to pay on a very regular basis for several more months as well. But before the first year was quite over, Monsieur Thénardier told his wife, “This woman is doing us no favor! What does she expect us to do with her measly seven francs?” So he wrote Fantine to demand twelve francs per month, and since she had been convinced by them that her child was “so happy and doing so well,” she agreed to the increase.
It seems that some people cannot love their own without hating someone else. This is exactly how Madame Thénardier was, for she loved her two daughters passionately, which caused her to hate Cosette. So this poor sweet child, who knew nothing of the world, or even of God, was constantly punished, scolded, and beaten, yet all the while seeing two other creatures like herself living in the brightness and happiness of dawn.
Madame Thénardier was incredibly vicious and wicked in dealing with Cosette. Therefore, her daughters, Éponine and Azelma, observed their mother and became equally as brutal in their treatment of her. They were smaller and younger than their mother but nonetheless were exact copies of her.
A year passed—then another. All the while the people in the village said to each other, “Those Thénardiers are good people. They are not rich themselves, but look how they are raising that poor child who was abandoned by her mother!” In their ignorance, they believed Cosette’s mother had forgotten her.
Over time Monsieur Thénardier learned by some obscure means that Cosette most likely was an illegitimate child, and he used that information against Fantine to exact an increase to fifteen francs a month. He also told the girl’s mother that “her little creature” was “growing and eating more” and then threatened to send her away unless he had more money each month. He would rant and rave to his wife, “I’ll send the little brat into the streets. I must have an increase!” Fantine paid the fifteen francs.
From year to year, the child grew, but so did her wretched condition. For the first two years, she was primarily the scapegoat of the other girls’ pranks, but shortly before she turned five years old, she became the servant of the household. It was heartbreaking to see this poor little child, dressed in nothing but her old linen rags that were full of holes, shivering in the bitter cold of winter. There she would be, sweeping the street before daylight with an enormous broom in her tiny red hands, while tears stained her large, beautiful eyes.
The people of the neighborhood would often see Cosette, and they dubbed her “the Lark.” The villagers, who were fond of bestowing nicknames on people, saw this trembling, frightened, and shivering little creature as no bigger than a bird. And like a lark, she was up before daybreak—before anyone else in the house or the village was awake—and would be at work in the street or the fields.
Only this little lark never sang.