





1817 is the year which Louis XVIII., with a certain royal assurance
which was not wanting in pride, entitled the twenty-second of his
reign. It is the year in which M. Bruguière de Sorsum was celebrated.
All the hairdressers’ shops, hoping for powder and the return of the
royal bird, were besmeared with azure and decked with fleurs-de-lys. It
was the candid time at which Count Lynch sat every Sunday as
church-warden in the church-warden’s pew of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, in
his costume of a peer of France, with his red ribbon and his long nose
and the majesty of profile peculiar to a man who has performed a
brilliant action. The brilliant action performed by M. Lynch was this:
being mayor of Bordeaux, on the 12th of March, 1814, he had surrendered
the city a little too promptly to M. the Duke d’Angoulême. Hence his
peerage. In 1817 fashion swallowed up little boys of from four to six
years of age in vast caps of morocco leather with ear-tabs resembling
Esquimaux mitres. The French army was dressed in white, after the mode
of the Austrian; the regiments were called legions; instead of numbers
they bore the names of departments; Napoleon was at St. Helena; and
since England refused him green cloth, he was having his old coats
turned. In 1817 Pelligrini sang; Mademoiselle Bigottini danced; Potier
reigned; Odry did not yet exist. Madame Saqui had succeeded to Forioso.
There were still Prussians in France. M. Delalot was a personage.
Legitimacy had just asserted itself by cutting off the hand, then the
head, of Pleignier, of Carbonneau, and of Tolleron. The Prince de
Talleyrand, grand chamberlain, and the Abbé Louis, appointed minister
of finance, laughed as they looked at each other, with the laugh of the
two augurs; both of them had celebrated, on the 14th of July, 1790, the
mass of federation in the Champ de Mars; Talleyrand had said it as
bishop, Louis had served it in the capacity of deacon. In 1817, in the
side-alleys of this same Champ de Mars, two great cylinders of wood
might have been seen lying in the rain, rotting amid the grass, painted
blue, with traces of eagles and bees, from which the gilding was
falling. These were the columns which two years before had upheld the
Emperor’s platform in the Champ de Mai. They were blackened here and
there with the scorches of the bivouac of Austrians encamped near
Gros-Caillou. Two or three of these columns had disappeared in these
bivouac fires, and had warmed the large hands of the Imperial troops.
The Field of May had this remarkable point: that it had been held in
the month of June and in the Field of March (Mars). In this year, 1817,
two things were popular: the Voltaire-Touquet and the snuff-box _à la
Charter_. The most recent Parisian sensation was the crime of Dautun,
who had thrown his brother’s head into the fountain of the
Flower-Market.

They had begun to feel anxious at the Naval Department, on account of
the lack of news from that fatal frigate, _The Medusa_, which was
destined to cover Chaumareix with infamy and Géricault with glory.
Colonel Selves was going to Egypt to become Soliman-Pasha. The palace
of 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, the little
shed of boards, which had served as an observatory to Messier, the
naval astronomer under Louis XVI., was still to be seen. The Duchesse
de Duras read to three or four friends her unpublished _Ourika_, in her
boudoir furnished by X. in sky-blue satin. The N’s were scratched off
the Louvre. The bridge of Austerlitz had abdicated, and was entitled
the bridge of the King’s Garden [du Jardin du Roi], a double enigma,
which disguised the bridge of Austerlitz and the Jardin des Plantes at
one stroke. Louis XVIII., much preoccupied while annotating Horace with
the corner of his finger-nail, heroes who have become emperors, and
makers of wooden shoes who have become dauphins, had two
anxieties,—Napoleon and Mathurin Bruneau. The French Academy had given
for its prize subject, _The Happiness procured through Study_. M.
Bellart was officially eloquent. In his shadow could be seen
germinating that future advocate-general of Broë, dedicated to the
sarcasms of Paul-Louis Courier. There was a false Chateaubriand, named
Marchangy, in the interim, until there should be a false Marchangy,
named d’Arlincourt. _Claire d’Albe_ and _Malek-Adel_ were masterpieces;
Madame Cottin was proclaimed the chief writer of the epoch. The
Institute had the academician, Napoleon Bonaparte, stricken from its
list of members. A royal ordinance erected Angoulême into a naval
school; for the Duc d’Angoulême, being lord high admiral, it was
evident that the city of Angoulême had all the qualities of a seaport;
otherwise the monarchical principle would have received a wound. In the
Council of Ministers the question was agitated whether vignettes
representing slack-rope performances, which adorned Franconi’s
advertising posters, and which attracted throngs of street urchins,
should be tolerated. M. Paër, the author of _Agnese_, a good sort of
fellow, with a square face and a wart on his cheek, directed the little
private concerts of the Marquise de Sasenaye in the Rue Ville l’Évêque.
All the young girls were singing the _Hermit of Saint-Avelle_, with
words by Edmond Géraud. _The Yellow Dwarf_ was transferred into
_Mirror_. The Café Lemblin stood up for the Emperor, against the Café
Valois, which upheld the Bourbons. The Duc de Berri, already surveyed
from the shadow by Louvel, had just been married to a princess of
Sicily. Madame de Staël had died a year previously. The body-guard
hissed Mademoiselle Mars. The grand newspapers were all very small.
Their form was restricted, but their liberty was great. The
_Constitutionnel_ was constitutional. _La Minerve_ called Chateaubriand
_Chateaubriant_. That _t_ made the good middle-class people laugh
heartily at the expense of the great writer. In journals which sold
themselves, prostituted journalists, insulted the exiles of 1815. David
had no longer any talent, Arnault had no longer any wit, Carnot was no
longer honest, Soult had won no battles; it is true that Napoleon had
no longer any genius. No one is ignorant of the fact that letters sent
to an exile by post very rarely reached him, as the police made it
their religious duty to intercept them. This is no new fact; Descartes
complained of it in his exile. Now David, having, in a Belgian
publication, shown some displeasure at not receiving letters which had
been written to him, it struck the royalist journals as amusing; and
they derided the prescribed man well on this occasion. What separated
two men more than an abyss was to say, the _regicides_, or to say the
_voters_; to say the _enemies_, or to say the _allies_; to say
_Napoleon_, or to say _Buonaparte_. All sensible people were agreed
that the era of revolution had been closed forever by King Louis
XVIII., surnamed “The Immortal Author of the Charter.” On the platform
of the Pont-Neuf, the word _Redivivus_ was carved on the pedestal that
awaited the statue of Henry IV. M. Piet, in the Rue Thérèse, No. 4, was
making the rough draft of his privy assembly to consolidate the
monarchy. The leaders of the Right said at grave conjunctures, “We must
write to Bacot.” MM. Canuel, O’Mahoney, and De Chappedelaine were
preparing the sketch, to some extent with Monsieur’s approval, of what
was to become later on “The Conspiracy of the Bord de l’Eau”—of the
waterside. L’Épingle Noire was already plotting in his own quarter.
Delaverderie was conferring with Trogoff. M. Decazes, who was liberal
to a degree, reigned. Chateaubriand stood every morning at his window
at No. 27 Rue Saint-Dominique, clad in footed trousers, and slippers,
with a madras kerchief knotted over his gray hair, with his eyes fixed
on a mirror, a complete set of dentist’s instruments spread out before
him, cleaning his teeth, which were charming, while he dictated _The
Monarchy according to the Charter_ to M. Pilorge, his secretary.
Criticism, assuming an authoritative tone, preferred Lafon to Talma. M.
de Féletez signed himself A.; M. Hoffmann signed himself Z. Charles
Nodier wrote _Thérèse Aubert_. Divorce was abolished. Lyceums called
themselves colleges. The collegians, decorated on the collar with a
golden fleur-de-lys, fought each other _apropos_ of the King of Rome.
The counter-police of the château had denounced to her Royal Highness
Madame, the portrait, everywhere exhibited, of M. the Duc d’Orléans,
who made a better appearance in his uniform of a colonel-general of
hussars than M. the Duc de Berri, in his uniform of colonel-general of
dragoons—a serious inconvenience. The city of Paris was having the dome
of the Invalides regilded at its own expense. Serious men asked
themselves what M. de Trinquelague would do on such or such an
occasion; M. Clausel de Montals differed on divers points from M.
Clausel de Coussergues; M. de Salaberry was not satisfied. The comedian
Picard, who belonged to the Academy, which the comedian Molière had not
been able to do, had _The Two Philiberts_ played at the Odéon, upon
whose pediment the removal of the letters still allowed THEATRE OF THE
EMPRESS to be plainly read. People took part for or against Cugnet de
Montarlot. Fabvier was factious; Bavoux was revolutionary. The Liberal,
Pélicier, published an edition of Voltaire, with the following title:
_Works of Voltaire_, of the French Academy. “That will attract
purchasers,” said the ingenious editor. The general opinion was that M.
Charles Loyson would be the genius of the century; envy was beginning
to gnaw at him—a sign of glory; and this verse was composed on him:—

“Even when Loyson steals, one feels that he has paws.”


As Cardinal Fesch refused to resign, M. de Pins, Archbishop of Amasie,
administered the diocese of Lyons. The quarrel over the valley of
Dappes was begun between Switzerland and France by a memoir from
Captain, afterwards General Dufour. Saint-Simon, ignored, was erecting
his sublime dream. There was a celebrated Fourier at the Academy of
Science, whom posterity has forgotten; and in some garret an obscure
Fourier, whom the future will recall. Lord Byron was beginning to make
his mark; a note to a poem by Millevoye introduced him to France in
these terms: _a certain Lord Baron_. David d’Angers was trying to work
in marble. The Abbé Caron was speaking, in terms of praise, to a
private gathering of seminarists in the blind alley of Feuillantines,
of an unknown priest, named Félicité-Robert, who, at a latter date,
became Lamennais. A thing which smoked and clattered on the Seine with
the noise of a swimming dog went and came beneath the windows of the
Tuileries, from the Pont Royal to the Pont Louis XV.; it was a piece of
mechanism which was not good for much; a sort of plaything, the idle
dream of a dream-ridden inventor; an utopia—a steamboat. The Parisians
stared indifferently at this useless thing. M. de Vaublanc, the
reformer of the Institute by a coup d’état, the distinguished author of
numerous academicians, ordinances, and batches of members, after having
created them, could not succeed in becoming one himself. The Faubourg
Saint-Germain and the pavilion de Marsan wished to have M. Delaveau for
prefect of police, on account of his piety. Dupuytren and Récamier
entered into a quarrel in the amphitheatre of the School of Medicine,
and threatened each other with their fists on the subject of the
divinity of Jesus Christ. Cuvier, with one eye on Genesis and the other
on nature, tried to please bigoted reaction by reconciling fossils with
texts and by making mastodons flatter Moses.

M. François de Neufchâteau, the praiseworthy cultivator of the memory
of Parmentier, made a thousand efforts to have _pomme de terre_
[potato] pronounced _parmentière_, and succeeded therein not at all.
The Abbé Grégoire, ex-bishop, ex-conventionary, ex-senator, had passed,
in the royalist polemics, to the state of “Infamous Grégoire.” The
locution of which we have made use—_passed to the state of_—has been
condemned as a neologism by M. Royer Collard. Under the third arch of
the Pont de Jéna, the new stone with which, the two years previously,
the mining aperture made by Blücher to blow up the bridge had been
stopped up, was still recognizable on account of its whiteness. Justice
summoned to its bar a man who, on seeing the Comte d’Artois enter Notre
Dame, had said aloud: _“Sapristi! I regret the time when I saw
Bonaparte and Talma enter the Bel Sauvage, arm in arm.”_ A seditious
utterance. Six months in prison. Traitors showed themselves unbuttoned;
men who had gone over to the enemy on the eve of battle made no secret
of their recompense, and strutted immodestly in the light of day, in
the cynicism of riches and dignities; deserters from Ligny and
Quatre-Bras, in the brazenness of their well-paid turpitude, exhibited
their devotion to the monarchy in the most barefaced manner.

This is what floats up confusedly, pell-mell, for the year 1817, and is
now forgotten. History neglects nearly all these particulars, and
cannot do otherwise; the infinity would overwhelm it. Nevertheless,
these details, which are wrongly called trivial,—there are no trivial
facts in humanity, nor little leaves in vegetation,—are useful. It is
of the physiognomy of the years that the physiognomy of the centuries
is composed. In this year of 1817 four young Parisians arranged “a fine
farce.”







These Parisians came, one from Toulouse, another from Limoges, the
third from Cahors, and the fourth from Montauban; but they were
students; and when one says student, one says Parisian: to study in
Paris is to be born in Paris.

These young men were insignificant; every one has seen such faces; four
specimens of humanity taken at random; neither good nor bad, neither
wise nor ignorant, neither geniuses nor fools; handsome, with that
charming April which is called twenty years. They were four Oscars;
for, at that epoch, Arthurs did not yet exist. _Burn for him the
perfumes of Araby!_ exclaimed romance. _Oscar advances. Oscar, I shall
behold him!_ People had just emerged from Ossian; elegance was
Scandinavian and Caledonian; the pure English style was only to prevail
later, and the first of the Arthurs, Wellington, had but just won the
battle of Waterloo.

These Oscars bore the names, one of Félix Tholomyès, of Toulouse; the
second, Listolier, of Cahors; the next, Fameuil, of Limoges; the last,
Blachevelle, of Montauban. Naturally, each of them had his mistress.
Blachevelle loved Favourite, so named because she had been in England;
Listolier adored Dahlia, who had taken for her nickname the name of a
flower; Fameuil idolized Zéphine, an abridgment of Joséphine; Tholomyès
had Fantine, called the Blonde, because of her beautiful, sunny hair.

Favourite, Dahlia, Zéphine, and Fantine were four ravishing young
women, perfumed and radiant, still a little like working-women, and not
yet entirely divorced from their needles; somewhat disturbed by
intrigues, but still retaining on their faces something of the serenity
of toil, and in their souls that flower of honesty which survives the
first fall in woman. One of the four was called the young, because she
was the youngest of them, and one was called the old; the old one was
twenty-three. Not to conceal anything, the three first were more
experienced, more heedless, and more emancipated into the tumult of
life than Fantine the Blonde, who was still in her first illusions.

Dahlia, Zéphine, and especially Favourite, could not have said as much.
There had already been more than one episode in their romance, though
hardly begun; and the lover who had borne the name of Adolph in the
first chapter had turned out to be Alphonse in the second, and Gustave
in the third. Poverty and coquetry are two fatal counsellors; one
scolds and the other flatters, and the beautiful daughters of the
people have both of them whispering in their ear, each on its own side.
These badly guarded souls listen. Hence the falls which they
accomplish, and the stones which are thrown at them. They are
overwhelmed with splendor of all that is immaculate and inaccessible.
Alas! what if the Jungfrau were hungry?

Favourite having been in England, was admired by Dahlia and Zéphine.
She had had an establishment of her own very early in life. Her father
was an old unmarried professor of mathematics, a brutal man and a
braggart, who went out to give lessons in spite of his age. This
professor, when he was a young man, had one day seen a chambermaid’s
gown catch on a fender; he had fallen in love in consequence of this
accident. The result had been Favourite. She met her father from time
to time, and he bowed to her. One morning an old woman with the air of
a devotee, had entered her apartments, and had said to her, “You do not
know me, Mamemoiselle?” “No.” “I am your mother.” Then the old woman
opened the sideboard, and ate and drank, had a mattress which she owned
brought in, and installed herself. This cross and pious old mother
never spoke to Favourite, remained hours without uttering a word,
breakfasted, dined, and supped for four, and went down to the porter’s
quarters for company, where she spoke ill of her daughter.

It was having rosy nails that were too pretty which had drawn Dahlia to
Listolier, to others perhaps, to idleness. How could she make such
nails work? She who wishes to remain virtuous must not have pity on her
hands. As for Zéphine, she had conquered Fameuil by her roguish and
caressing little way of saying “Yes, sir.”


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

Goodness and philosophy are two distinct things; the proof of this is
that, after making all due allowances for these little irregular
households, Favourite, Zéphine, and Dahlia were philosophical young
women, while Fantine was a good girl.

Good! some one will exclaim; and Tholomyès? Solomon would reply that
love forms a part of wisdom. We will confine ourselves to saying that
the love of Fantine was a first love, a sole love, a faithful love.

She alone, of all the four, was not called “thou” by a single one of
them.

Fantine was one of those beings who blossom, so to speak, from the
dregs of the people. Though she had emerged from the most unfathomable
depths of social shadow, she bore on her brow the sign of the anonymous
and the unknown. She was born at M. sur M. Of what parents? Who can
say? She had never known father or mother. She was called Fantine. Why
Fantine? She had never borne any other name. At the epoch of her birth
the Directory still existed. She had no family name; she had no family;
no baptismal name; the Church no longer existed. She bore the name
which pleased the first random passer-by, who had encountered her, when
a very small child, running bare-legged in the street. She received the
name as she received the water from the clouds upon her brow when it
rained. She was called little Fantine. No one knew more than that. This
human creature had entered life in just this way. At the age of ten,
Fantine quitted the town and went to service with some farmers in the
neighborhood. At fifteen she came to Paris “to seek her fortune.”
Fantine was beautiful, and remained pure as long as she could. She was
a lovely blonde, with fine teeth. She had gold and pearls for her
dowry; but her gold was on her head, and her pearls were in her mouth.

She worked for her living; then, still for the sake of her living,—for
the heart, also, has its hunger,—she loved.

She loved Tholomyès.

An amour for him; passion for her. The streets of the Latin quarter,
filled with throngs of students and grisettes, saw the beginning of
their dream. Fantine had long evaded Tholomyès in the mazes of the hill
of the Pantheon, where so many adventurers twine and untwine, but in
such a way as constantly to encounter him again. There is a way of
avoiding which resembles seeking. In short, the eclogue took place.

Blachevelle, Listolier, and Fameuil formed a sort of group of which
Tholomyès was the head. It was he who possessed the wit.

Tholomyès was the antique old student; he was rich; he had an income of
four thousand francs; four thousand francs! a splendid scandal on Mount
Sainte-Geneviève. Tholomyès was a fast man of thirty, and badly
preserved. He was wrinkled and toothless, and he had the beginning of a
bald spot, of which he himself said with sadness, _the skull at thirty,
the knee at forty_. His digestion was mediocre, and he had been
attacked by a watering in one eye. But in proportion as his youth
disappeared, gayety was kindled; he replaced his teeth with
buffooneries, his hair with mirth, his health with irony, his weeping
eye laughed incessantly. He was dilapidated but still in flower. His
youth, which was packing up for departure long before its time, beat a
retreat in good order, bursting with laughter, and no one saw anything
but fire. He had had a piece rejected at the Vaudeville. He made a few
verses now and then. In addition to this he doubted everything to the
last degree, which is a vast force in the eyes of the weak. Being thus
ironical and bald, he was the leader. _Iron_ is an English word. Is it
possible that irony is derived from it?

One day Tholomyès took the three others aside, with the gesture of an
oracle, and said to them:—

“Fantine, Dahlia, Zéphine, and Favourite have been teasing us for
nearly a year to give them a surprise. We have promised them solemnly
that we would. They are forever talking about it to us, to me in
particular, just as the old women in Naples cry to Saint Januarius,
‘_Faccia gialluta, fa o miracolo_, Yellow face, perform thy miracle,’
so our beauties say to me incessantly, ‘Tholomyès, when will you bring
forth your surprise?’ At the same time our parents keep writing to us.
Pressure on both sides. The moment has arrived, it seems to me; let us
discuss the question.”


Thereupon, Tholomyès lowered his voice and articulated something so
mirthful, that a vast and enthusiastic grin broke out upon the four
mouths simultaneously, and Blachevelle exclaimed, “That is an idea.”


A smoky tap-room presented itself; they entered, and the remainder of
their confidential colloquy was lost in shadow.

The result of these shades was a dazzling pleasure party which took
place on the following Sunday, the four young men inviting the four
young girls.






It is hard nowadays to picture to one’s self what a pleasure-trip of
students and grisettes to the country was like, forty-five years ago.
The suburbs of Paris are no longer the same; the physiognomy of what
may be called circumparisian life has changed completely in the last
half-century; where there was the cuckoo, there is the railway car;
where there was a tender-boat, there is now the steamboat; people speak
of Fécamp nowadays as they spoke of Saint-Cloud in those days. The
Paris of 1862 is a city which has France for its outskirts.

The four couples conscientiously went through with all the country
follies possible at that time. The vacation was beginning, and it was a
warm, bright, summer day. On the preceding day, Favourite, the only one
who knew how to write, had written the following to Tholomyès in the
name of the four: “It is a good hour to emerge from happiness.” That is
why they rose at five o’clock in the morning. Then they went to
Saint-Cloud by the coach, looked at the dry cascade and exclaimed,
“This must be very beautiful when there is water!” They breakfasted at
the _Tête-Noir_, where Castaing had not yet been; they treated
themselves to a game of ring-throwing under the quincunx of trees of
the grand fountain; they ascended Diogenes’ lantern, they gambled for
macaroons at the roulette establishment of the Pont de Sèvres, picked
bouquets at Pateaux, bought reed-pipes at Neuilly, ate apple tarts
everywhere, and were perfectly happy.

The young girls rustled and chatted like warblers escaped from their
cage. It was a perfect delirium. From time to time they bestowed little
taps on the young men. Matutinal intoxication of life! adorable years!
the wings of the dragonfly quiver. Oh, whoever you may be, do you not
remember? Have you rambled through the brushwood, holding aside the
branches, on account of the charming head which is coming on behind
you? Have you slid, laughing, down a slope all wet with rain, with a
beloved woman holding your hand, and crying, “Ah, my new boots! what a
state they are in!”


Let us say at once that that merry obstacle, a shower, was lacking in
the case of this good-humored party, although Favourite had said as
they set out, with a magisterial and maternal tone, _“The slugs are
crawling in the paths,—a sign of rain, children.”_

All four were madly pretty. A good old classic poet, then famous, a
good fellow who had an Éléonore, M. le Chevalier de Labouisse, as he
strolled that day beneath the chestnut-trees of Saint-Cloud, saw them
pass about ten o’clock in the morning, and exclaimed, “There is one too
many of them,” as he thought of the Graces. Favourite, Blachevelle’s
friend, the one aged three and twenty, the old one, ran on in front
under the great green boughs, jumped the ditches, stalked distractedly
over bushes, and presided over this merry-making with the spirit of a
young female faun. Zéphine and Dahlia, whom chance had made beautiful
in such a way that they set each off when they were together, and
completed each other, never left each other, more from an instinct of
coquetry than from friendship, and clinging to each other, they assumed
English poses; the first _keepsakes_ had just made their appearance,
melancholy was dawning for women, as later on, Byronism dawned for men;
and the hair of the tender sex began to droop dolefully. Zéphine and
Dahlia had their hair dressed in rolls. Listolier and Fameuil, who were
engaged in discussing their professors, explained to Fantine the
difference that existed between M. Delvincourt and M. Blondeau.

Blachevelle seemed to have been created expressly to carry Favourite’s
single-bordered, imitation India shawl of Ternaux’s manufacture, on his
arm on Sundays.

Tholomyès followed, dominating the group. He was very gay, but one felt
the force of government in him; there was dictation in his joviality;
his principal ornament was a pair of trousers of elephant-leg pattern
of nankeen, with straps of braided copper wire; he carried a stout
rattan worth two hundred francs in his hand, and, as he treated himself
to everything, a strange thing called a cigar in his mouth. Nothing was
sacred to him; he smoked.

“That Tholomyès is astounding!” said the others, with veneration. “What
trousers! What energy!”


As for Fantine, she was a joy to behold. Her splendid teeth had
evidently received an office from God,—laughter. She preferred to carry
her little hat of sewed straw, with its long white strings, in her hand
rather than on her head. Her thick blond hair, which was inclined to
wave, and which easily uncoiled, and which it was necessary to fasten
up incessantly, seemed made for the flight of Galatea under the
willows. Her rosy lips babbled enchantingly. The corners of her mouth
voluptuously turned up, as in the antique masks of Erigone, had an air
of encouraging the audacious; but her long, shadowy lashes drooped
discreetly over the jollity of the lower part of the face as though to
call a halt. There was something indescribably harmonious and striking
about her entire dress. She wore a gown of mauve barège, little reddish
brown buskins, whose ribbons traced an X on her fine, white,
open-worked stockings, and that sort of muslin spencer, a Marseilles
invention, whose name, _canezou_, a corruption of the words _quinze
août_, pronounced after the fashion of the Canebière, signifies fine
weather, heat, and midday. The three others, less timid, as we have
already said, wore low-necked dresses without disguise, which in
summer, beneath flower-adorned hats, are very graceful and enticing;
but by the side of these audacious outfits, blond Fantine’s _canezou_,
with its transparencies, its indiscretion, and its reticence,
concealing and displaying at one and the same time, seemed an alluring
godsend of decency, and the famous Court of Love, presided over by the
Vicomtesse de Cette, with the sea-green eyes, would, perhaps, have
awarded the prize for coquetry to this _canezou_, in the contest for
the prize of modesty. The most ingenious is, at times, the wisest. This
does happen.

Brilliant of face, delicate of profile, with eyes of a deep blue, heavy
lids, feet arched and small, wrists and ankles admirably formed, a
white skin which, here and there allowed the azure branching of the
veins to be seen, joy, a cheek that was young and fresh, the robust
throat of the Juno of Ægina, a strong and supple nape of the neck,
shoulders modelled as though by Coustou, with a voluptuous dimple in
the middle, visible through the muslin; a gayety cooled by dreaminess;
sculptural and exquisite—such was Fantine; and beneath these feminine
adornments and these ribbons one could divine a statue, and in that
statue a soul.

Fantine was beautiful, without being too conscious of it. Those rare
dreamers, mysterious priests of the beautiful who silently confront
everything with perfection, would have caught a glimpse in this little
working-woman, through the transparency of her Parisian grace, of the
ancient sacred euphony. This daughter of the shadows was thoroughbred.
She was beautiful in the two ways—style and rhythm. Style is the form
of the ideal; rhythm is its movement.

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

To an observer who studied her attentively, that which breathed from
her athwart all the intoxication of her age, the season, and her love
affair, was an invincible expression of reserve and modesty. She
remained a little astonished. This chaste astonishment is the shade of
difference which separates Psyche from Venus. Fantine had the long,
white, fine fingers of the vestal virgin who stirs the ashes of the
sacred fire with a golden pin. Although she would have refused nothing
to Tholomyès, as we shall have more than ample opportunity to see, her
face in repose was supremely virginal; a sort of serious and almost
austere dignity suddenly overwhelmed her at certain times, and there
was nothing more singular and disturbing than to see gayety become so
suddenly extinct there, and meditation succeed to cheerfulness without
any transition state. This sudden and sometimes severely accentuated
gravity resembled the disdain of a goddess. Her brow, her nose, her
chin, presented that equilibrium of outline which is quite distinct
from equilibrium of proportion, and from which harmony of countenance
results; in the very characteristic interval which separates the base
of the nose from the upper lip, she had that imperceptible and charming
fold, a mysterious sign of chastity, which makes Barberousse fall in
love with a Diana found in the treasures of Iconia.

Love is a fault; so be it. Fantine was innocence floating high over
fault.






That day was composed of dawn, from one end to the other. All nature
seemed to be having a holiday, and to be laughing. The flower-beds of
Saint-Cloud perfumed the air; the breath of the Seine rustled the
leaves vaguely; the branches gesticulated in the wind, bees pillaged
the jasmines; a whole bohemia of butterflies swooped down upon the
yarrow, the clover, and the sterile oats; in the august park of the
King of France there was a pack of vagabonds, the birds.

The four merry couples, mingled with the sun, the fields, the flowers,
the trees, were resplendent.

And in this community of Paradise, talking, singing, running, dancing,
chasing butterflies, plucking convolvulus, wetting their pink,
open-work stockings in the tall grass, fresh, wild, without malice, all
received, to some extent, the kisses of all, with the exception of
Fantine, who was hedged about with that vague resistance of hers
composed of dreaminess and wildness, and who was in love. “You always
have a queer look about you,” said Favourite to her.

Such things are joys. These passages of happy couples are a profound
appeal to life and nature, and make a caress and light spring forth
from everything. There was once a fairy who created the fields and
forests expressly for those in love,—in that eternal hedge-school of
lovers, which is forever beginning anew, and which will last as long as
there are hedges and scholars. Hence the popularity of spring among
thinkers. The patrician and the knife-grinder, the duke and the peer,
the limb of the law, the courtiers and townspeople, as they used to say
in olden times, all are subjects of this fairy. They laugh and hunt,
and there is in the air the brilliance of an apotheosis—what a
transfiguration effected by love! Notaries’ clerks are gods. And the
little cries, the pursuits through the grass, the waists embraced on
the fly, those jargons which are melodies, those adorations which burst
forth in the manner of pronouncing a syllable, those cherries torn from
one mouth by another,—all this blazes forth and takes its place among
the celestial glories. Beautiful women waste themselves sweetly. They
think that this will never come to an end. Philosophers, poets,
painters, observe these ecstasies and know not what to make of it, so
greatly are they dazzled by it. The departure for Cythera! exclaims
Watteau; Lancret, the painter of plebeians, contemplates his bourgeois,
who have flitted away into the azure sky; Diderot stretches out his
arms to all these love idyls, and d’Urfé mingles druids with them.

After breakfast the four couples went to what was then called the
King’s Square to see a newly arrived plant from India, whose name
escapes our memory at this moment, and which, at that epoch, was
attracting all Paris to Saint-Cloud. It was an odd and charming shrub
with a long stem, whose numerous branches, bristling and leafless and
as fine as threads, were covered with a million tiny white rosettes;
this gave the shrub the air of a head of hair studded with flowers.
There was always an admiring crowd about it.

After viewing the shrub, Tholomyès exclaimed, “I offer you asses!” and
having agreed upon a price with the owner of the asses, they returned
by way of Vanvres and Issy. At Issy an incident occurred. The truly
national park, at that time owned by Bourguin the contractor, happened
to be wide open. They passed the gates, visited the manikin anchorite
in his grotto, tried the mysterious little effects of the famous
cabinet of mirrors, the wanton trap worthy of a satyr become a
millionaire or of Turcaret metamorphosed into a Priapus. They had
stoutly shaken the swing attached to the two chestnut-trees celebrated
by the Abbé de Bernis. As he swung these beauties, one after the other,
producing folds in the fluttering skirts which Greuze would have found
to his taste, amid peals of laughter, the Toulousan Tholomyès, who was
somewhat of a Spaniard, Toulouse being the cousin of Tolosa, sang, to a
melancholy chant, the old ballad _gallega_, probably inspired by some
lovely maid dashing in full flight upon a rope between two trees:—

“Soy de Badajoz,
Amor me llama,
Toda mi alma,
Es en mi ojos,
Porque enseñas,
A tuas piernas.

“Badajoz is my home,
And Love is my name;
To my eyes in flame,
All my soul doth come;
For instruction meet
I receive at thy feet”


Fantine alone refused to swing.

“I don’t like to have people put on airs like that,” muttered
Favourite, with a good deal of acrimony.

After leaving the asses there was a fresh delight; they crossed the
Seine in a boat, and proceeding from Passy on foot they reached the
barrier of l’Étoile. They had been up since five o’clock that morning,
as the reader will remember; but _bah! there is no such thing as
fatigue on Sunday_, said Favourite; _on Sunday fatigue does not work_.

About three o’clock the four couples, frightened at their happiness,
were sliding down the Russian mountains, a singular edifice which then
occupied the heights of Beaujon, and whose undulating line was visible
above the trees of the Champs-Élysées.

From time to time Favourite exclaimed:—

“And the surprise? I claim the surprise.”


“Patience,” replied Tholomyès.






The Russian mountains having been exhausted, they began to think about
dinner; and the radiant party of eight, somewhat weary at last, became
stranded in Bombarda’s public house, a branch establishment which had
been set up in the Champs-Élysées by that famous restaurant-keeper,
Bombarda, whose sign could then be seen in the Rue de Rivoli, near
Delorme Alley.

A large but ugly room, with an alcove and a bed at the end (they had
been obliged to put up with this accommodation in view of the Sunday
crowd); two windows whence they could survey beyond the elms, the quay
and the river; a magnificent August sunlight lightly touching the
panes; two tables; upon one of them a triumphant mountain of bouquets,
mingled with the hats of men and women; at the other the four couples
seated round a merry confusion of platters, dishes, glasses, and
bottles; jugs of beer mingled with flasks of wine; very little order on
the table, some disorder beneath it;

“They made beneath the table
A noise, a clatter of the feet that was abominable,”


says Molière.

This was the state which the shepherd idyl, begun at five o’clock in
the morning, had reached at half-past four in the afternoon. The sun
was setting; their appetites were satisfied.

The Champs-Élysées, filled with sunshine and with people, were nothing
but light and dust, the two things of which glory is composed. The
horses of Marly, those neighing marbles, were prancing in a cloud of
gold. Carriages were going and coming. A squadron of magnificent
body-guards, with their clarions at their head, were descending the
Avenue de Neuilly; the white flag, showing faintly rosy in the setting
sun, floated over the dome of the Tuileries. The Place de la Concorde,
which had become the Place Louis XV. once more, was choked with happy
promenaders. Many wore the silver fleur-de-lys suspended from the
white-watered ribbon, which had not yet wholly disappeared from
button-holes in the year 1817. Here and there choruses of little girls
threw to the winds, amid the passers-by, who formed into circles and
applauded, the then celebrated Bourbon air, which was destined to
strike the Hundred Days with lightning, and which had for its refrain:—

“Rendez-nous notre père de Gand,
Rendez-nous notre père.”

“Give us back our father from Ghent,
Give us back our father.”


Groups of dwellers in the suburbs, in Sunday array, sometimes even
decorated with the fleur-de-lys, like the bourgeois, scattered over the
large square and the Marigny square, were playing at rings and
revolving on the wooden horses; others were engaged in drinking; some
journeyman printers had on paper caps; their laughter was audible.
Everything was radiant. It was a time of undisputed peace and profound
royalist security; it was the epoch when a special and private report
of Chief of Police Anglès to the King, on the subject of the suburbs of
Paris, terminated with these lines:—

“Taking all things into consideration, Sire, there is nothing to be
feared from these people. They are as heedless and as indolent as cats.
The populace is restless in the provinces; it is not in Paris. These
are very pretty men, Sire. It would take all of two of them to make one
of your grenadiers. There is nothing to be feared on the part of the
populace of Paris the capital. It is remarkable that the stature of
this population should have diminished in the last fifty years; and the
populace of the suburbs is still more puny than at the time of the
Revolution. It is not dangerous. In short, it is an amiable rabble.”


Prefects of the police do not deem it possible that a cat can transform
itself into a lion; that does happen, however, and in that lies the
miracle wrought by the populace of Paris. Moreover, the cat so despised
by Count Anglès possessed the esteem of the republics of old. In their
eyes it was liberty incarnate; and as though to serve as pendant to the
Minerva Aptera of the Piræus, there stood on the public square in
Corinth the colossal bronze figure of a cat. The ingenuous police of
the Restoration beheld the populace of Paris in too “rose-colored” a
light; it is not so much of “an amiable rabble” as it is thought. The
Parisian is to the Frenchman what the Athenian was to the Greek: no one
sleeps more soundly than he, no one is more frankly frivolous and lazy
than he, no one can better assume the air of forgetfulness; let him not
be trusted nevertheless; he is ready for any sort of cool deed; but
when there is glory at the end of it, he is worthy of admiration in
every sort of fury. Give him a pike, he will produce the 10th of
August; give him a gun, you will have Austerlitz. He is Napoleon’s stay
and Danton’s resource. Is it a question of country, he enlists; is it a
question of liberty, he tears up the pavements. Beware! his hair filled
with wrath, is epic; his blouse drapes itself like the folds of a
chlamys. Take care! he will make of the first Rue Grenétat which comes
to hand Caudine Forks. When the hour strikes, this man of the faubourgs
will grow in stature; this little man will arise, and his gaze will be
terrible, and his breath will become a tempest, and there will issue
forth from that slender chest enough wind to disarrange the folds of
the Alps. It is, thanks to the suburban man of Paris, that the
Revolution, mixed with arms, conquers Europe. He sings; it is his
delight. Proportion his song to his nature, and you will see! As long
as he has for refrain nothing but _la Carmagnole_, he only overthrows
Louis XVI.; make him sing the _Marseillaise_, and he will free the
world.

This note jotted down on the margin of Anglès’ report, we will return
to our four couples. The dinner, as we have said, was drawing to its
close.






Chat at table, the chat of love; it is as impossible to reproduce one
as the other; the chat of love is a cloud; the chat at table is smoke.

Fameuil and Dahlia were humming. Tholomyès was drinking. Zéphine was
laughing, Fantine smiling, Listolier blowing a wooden trumpet which he
had purchased at Saint-Cloud.

Favourite gazed tenderly at Blachevelle and said:—

“Blachevelle, I adore you.”


This called forth a question from Blachevelle:—

“What would you do, Favourite, if I were to cease to love you?”


“I!” cried Favourite. “Ah! Do not say that even in jest! If you were to
cease to love me, I would spring after you, I would scratch you, I
should rend you, I would throw you into the water, I would have you
arrested.”


Blachevelle smiled with the voluptuous self-conceit of a man who is
tickled in his self-love. Favourite resumed:—

“Yes, I would scream to the police! Ah! I should not restrain myself,
not at all! Rabble!”


Blachevelle threw himself back in his chair, in an ecstasy, and closed
both eyes proudly.

Dahlia, as she ate, said in a low voice to Favourite, amid the uproar:—

“So you really idolize him deeply, that Blachevelle of yours?”


“I? I detest him,” replied Favourite in the same tone, seizing her fork
again. “He is avaricious. I love the little fellow opposite me in my
house. He is very nice, that young man; do you know him? One can see
that he is an actor by profession. I love actors. As soon as he comes
in, his mother says to him: ‘Ah! mon Dieu! my peace of mind is gone.
There he goes with his shouting. But, my dear, you are splitting my
head!’ So he goes up to rat-ridden garrets, to black holes, as high as
he can mount, and there he sets to singing, declaiming, how do I know
what? so that he can be heard downstairs! He earns twenty sous a day at
an attorney’s by penning quibbles. He is the son of a former precentor
of Saint-Jacques-du-Haut-Pas. Ah! he is very nice. He idolizes me so,
that one day when he saw me making batter for some pancakes, he said to
me: _‘Mamselle, make your gloves into fritters, and I will eat them.’_
It is only artists who can say such things as that. Ah! he is very
nice. I am in a fair way to go out of my head over that little fellow.
Never mind; I tell Blachevelle that I adore him—how I lie! Hey! How I
do lie!”


Favourite paused, and then went on:—

“I am sad, you see, Dahlia. It has done nothing but rain all summer;
the wind irritates me; the wind does not abate. Blachevelle is very
stingy; there are hardly any green peas in the market; one does not
know what to eat. I have the spleen, as the English say, butter is so
dear! and then you see it is horrible, here we are dining in a room
with a bed in it, and that disgusts me with life.”







In the meantime, while some sang, the rest talked together tumultuously
all at once; it was no longer anything but noise. Tholomyès intervened.

“Let us not talk at random nor too fast,” he exclaimed. “Let us
reflect, if we wish to be brilliant. Too much improvisation empties the
mind in a stupid way. Running beer gathers no froth. No haste,
gentlemen. Let us mingle majesty with the feast. Let us eat with
meditation; let us make haste slowly. Let us not hurry. Consider the
springtime; if it makes haste, it is done for; that is to say, it gets
frozen. Excess of zeal ruins peach-trees and apricot-trees. Excess of
zeal kills the grace and the mirth of good dinners. No zeal, gentlemen!
Grimod de la Reynière agrees with Talleyrand.”


A hollow sound of rebellion rumbled through the group.

“Leave us in peace, Tholomyès,” said Blachevelle.

“Down with the tyrant!” said Fameuil.

“Bombarda, Bombance, and Bambochel!” cried Listolier.

“Sunday exists,” resumed Fameuil.

“We are sober,” added Listolier.

“Tholomyès,” remarked Blachevelle, “contemplate my calmness [_mon
calme_].”


“You are the Marquis of that,” retorted Tholomyès.

This mediocre play upon words produced the effect of a stone in a pool.
The Marquis de Montcalm was at that time a celebrated royalist. All the
frogs held their peace.

“Friends,” cried Tholomyès, with the accent of a man who had recovered
his empire, “Come to yourselves. This pun which has fallen from the
skies must not be received with too much stupor. Everything which falls
in that way is not necessarily worthy of enthusiasm and respect. The
pun is the dung of the mind which soars. The jest falls, no matter
where; and the mind after producing a piece of stupidity plunges into
the azure depths. A whitish speck flattened against the rock does not
prevent the condor from soaring aloft. Far be it from me to insult the
pun! I honor it in proportion to its merits; nothing more. All the most
august, the most sublime, the most charming of humanity, and perhaps
outside of humanity, have made puns. Jesus Christ made a pun on St.
Peter, Moses on Isaac, Æschylus on Polynices, Cleopatra on Octavius.
And observe that Cleopatra’s pun preceded the battle of Actium, and
that had it not been for it, no one would have remembered the city of
Toryne, a Greek name which signifies a ladle. That once conceded, I
return to my exhortation. I repeat, brothers, I repeat, no zeal, no
hubbub, no excess; even in witticisms, gayety, jollities, or plays on
words. Listen to me. I have the prudence of Amphiaraüs and the baldness
of Cæsar. There must be a limit, even to rebuses. _Est modus in rebus_.

“There must be a limit, even to dinners. You are fond of apple
turnovers, ladies; do not indulge in them to excess. Even in the matter
of turnovers, good sense and art are requisite. Gluttony chastises the
glutton, _Gula punit Gulax_. Indigestion is charged by the good God
with preaching morality to stomachs. And remember this: each one of our
passions, even love, has a stomach which must not be filled too full.
In all things the word _finis_ must be written in good season;
self-control must be exercised when the matter becomes urgent; the bolt
must be drawn on appetite; one must set one’s own fantasy to the
violin, and carry one’s self to the post. The sage is the man who knows
how, at a given moment, to effect his own arrest. Have some confidence
in me, for I have succeeded to some extent in my study of the law,
according to the verdict of my examinations, for I know the difference
between the question put and the question pending, for I have sustained
a thesis in Latin upon the manner in which torture was administered at
Rome at the epoch when Munatius Demens was quæstor of the Parricide;
because I am going to be a doctor, apparently it does not follow that
it is absolutely necessary that I should be an imbecile. I recommend
you to moderation in your desires. It is true that my name is Félix
Tholomyès; I speak well. Happy is he who, when the hour strikes, takes
a heroic resolve, and abdicates like Sylla or Origenes.”


Favourite listened with profound attention.

“Félix,” said she, “what a pretty word! I love that name. It is Latin;
it means prosper.”


Tholomyès went on:—

“Quirites, gentlemen, caballeros, my friends. Do you wish never to feel
the prick, to do without the nuptial bed, and to brave love? Nothing
more simple. Here is the receipt: lemonade, excessive exercise, hard
labor; work yourself to death, drag blocks, sleep not, hold vigil,
gorge yourself with nitrous beverages, and potions of nymphæas; drink
emulsions of poppies and agnus castus; season this with a strict diet,
starve yourself, and add thereto cold baths, girdles of herbs, the
application of a plate of lead, lotions made with the subacetate of
lead, and fomentations of oxycrat.”


“I prefer a woman,” said Listolier.

“Woman,” resumed Tholomyès; “distrust her. Woe to him who yields
himself to the unstable heart of woman! Woman is perfidious and
disingenuous. She detests the serpent from professional jealousy. The
serpent is the shop over the way.”


“Tholomyès!” cried Blachevelle, “you are drunk!”


“Pardieu,” said Tholomyès.

“Then be gay,” resumed Blachevelle.

“I agree to that,” responded Tholomyès.

And, refilling his glass, he rose.

“Glory to wine! _Nunc te, Bacche, canam!_ Pardon me ladies; that is
Spanish. And the proof of it, señoras, is this: like people, like cask.
The arrobe of Castille contains sixteen litres; the cantaro of
Alicante, twelve; the almude of the Canaries, twenty-five; the cuartin
of the Balearic Isles, twenty-six; the boot of Tzar Peter, thirty. Long
live that Tzar who was great, and long live his boot, which was still
greater! Ladies, take the advice of a friend; make a mistake in your
neighbor if you see fit. The property of love is to err. A love affair
is not made to crouch down and brutalize itself like an English
serving-maid who has callouses on her knees from scrubbing. It is not
made for that; it errs gayly, our gentle love. It has been said, error
is human; I say, error is love. Ladies, I idolize you all. O Zéphine, O
Joséphine, face more than irregular, you would be charming were you not
all askew. You have the air of a pretty face upon which some one has
sat down by mistake. As for Favourite, O nymphs and muses! one day when
Blachevelle was crossing the gutter in the Rue Guérin-Boisseau, he
espied a beautiful girl with white stockings well drawn up, which
displayed her legs. This prologue pleased him, and Blachevelle fell in
love. The one he loved was Favourite. O Favourite, thou hast Ionian
lips. There was a Greek painter named Euphorion, who was surnamed the
painter of the lips. That Greek alone would have been worthy to paint
thy mouth. Listen! before thee, there was never a creature worthy of
the name. Thou wert made to receive the apple like Venus, or to eat it
like Eve; beauty begins with thee. I have just referred to Eve; it is
thou who hast created her. Thou deservest the letters-patent of the
beautiful woman. O Favourite, I cease to address you as ‘thou,’ because
I pass from poetry to prose. You were speaking of my name a little
while ago. That touched me; but let us, whoever we may be, distrust
names. They may delude us. I am called Félix, and I am not happy. Words
are liars. Let us not blindly accept the indications which they afford
us. It would be a mistake to write to Liège 2 for corks, and to Pau for
gloves. Miss Dahlia, were I in your place, I would call myself Rosa. A
flower should smell sweet, and woman should have wit. I say nothing of
Fantine; she is a dreamer, a musing, thoughtful, pensive person; she is
a phantom possessed of the form of a nymph and the modesty of a nun,
who has strayed into the life of a grisette, but who takes refuge in
illusions, and who sings and prays and gazes into the azure without
very well knowing what she sees or what she is doing, and who, with her
eyes fixed on heaven, wanders in a garden where there are more birds
than are in existence. O Fantine, know this: I, Tholomyès, I am an
illusion; but she does not even hear me, that blond maid of Chimeras!
as for the rest, everything about her is freshness, suavity, youth,
sweet morning light. O Fantine, maid worthy of being called Marguerite
or Pearl, you are a woman from the beauteous Orient. Ladies, a second
piece of advice: do not marry; marriage is a graft; it takes well or
ill; avoid that risk. But bah! what am I saying? I am wasting my words.
Girls are incurable on the subject of marriage, and all that we wise
men can say will not prevent the waistcoat-makers and the
shoe-stitchers from dreaming of husbands studded with diamonds. Well,
so be it; but, my beauties, remember this, you eat too much sugar. You
have but one fault, O woman, and that is nibbling sugar. O nibbling
sex, your pretty little white teeth adore sugar. Now, heed me well,
sugar is a salt. All salts are withering. Sugar is the most desiccating
of all salts; it sucks the liquids of the blood through the veins;
hence the coagulation, and then the solidification of the blood; hence
tubercles in the lungs, hence death. That is why diabetes borders on
consumption. Then, do not crunch sugar, and you will live. I turn to
the men: gentlemen, make conquest, rob each other of your well-beloved
without remorse. Chassez across. In love there are no friends.
Everywhere where there is a pretty woman hostility is open. No quarter,
war to the death! a pretty woman is a _casus belli_; a pretty woman is
flagrant misdemeanor. All the invasions of history have been determined
by petticoats. Woman is man’s right. Romulus carried off the Sabines;
William carried off the Saxon women; Cæsar carried off the Roman women.
The man who is not loved soars like a vulture over the mistresses of
other men; and for my own part, to all those unfortunate men who are
widowers, I throw the sublime proclamation of Bonaparte to the army of
Italy: “Soldiers, you are in need of everything; the enemy has it.”


Tholomyès paused.

“Take breath, Tholomyès,” said Blachevelle.

At the same moment Blachevelle, supported by Listolier and Fameuil,
struck up to a plaintive air, one of those studio songs composed of the
first words which come to hand, rhymed richly and not at all, as
destitute of sense as the gesture of the tree and the sound of the
wind, which have their birth in the vapor of pipes, and are dissipated
and take their flight with them. This is the couplet by which the group
replied to Tholomyès’ harangue:—

“The father turkey-cocks so grave
Some money to an agent gave,
That master good Clermont-Tonnerre
Might be made pope on Saint Johns’ day fair.
But this good Clermont could not be
Made pope, because no priest was he;
And then their agent, whose wrath burned,
With all their money back returned.”


This was not calculated to calm Tholomyès’ improvisation; he emptied
his glass, filled, refilled it, and began again:—

“Down with wisdom! Forget all that I have said. Let us be neither
prudes nor prudent men nor prudhommes. I propose a toast to mirth; be
merry. Let us complete our course of law by folly and eating!
Indigestion and the digest. Let Justinian be the male, and Feasting,
the female! Joy in the depths! Live, O creation! The world is a great
diamond. I am happy. The birds are astonishing. What a festival
everywhere! The nightingale is a gratuitous Elleviou. Summer, I salute
thee! O Luxembourg! O Georgics of the Rue Madame, and of the Allée de
l’Observatoire! O pensive infantry soldiers! O all those charming
nurses who, while they guard the children, amuse themselves! The pampas
of America would please me if I had not the arcades of the Odéon. My
soul flits away into the virgin forests and to the savannas. All is
beautiful. The flies buzz in the sun. The sun has sneezed out the
humming bird. Embrace me, Fantine!”


He made a mistake and embraced Favourite.






“The dinners are better at Édon’s than at Bombarda’s,” exclaimed
Zéphine.

“I prefer Bombarda to Édon,” declared Blachevelle. “There is more
luxury. It is more Asiatic. Look at the room downstairs; there are
mirrors [_glaces_] on the walls.”


“I prefer them [_glaces_, ices] on my plate,” said Favourite.

Blachevelle persisted:—

“Look at the knives. The handles are of silver at Bombarda’s and of
bone at Édon’s. Now, silver is more valuable than bone.”


“Except for those who have a silver chin,” observed Tholomyès.

He was looking at the dome of the Invalides, which was visible from
Bombarda’s windows.

A pause ensued.

“Tholomyès,” exclaimed Fameuil, “Listolier and I were having a
discussion just now.”


“A discussion is a good thing,” replied Tholomyès; “a quarrel is
better.”


“We were disputing about philosophy.”


“Well?”


“Which do you prefer, Descartes or Spinoza?”


“Désaugiers,” said Tholomyès.

This decree pronounced, he took a drink, and went on:—

“I consent to live. All is not at an end on earth since we can still
talk nonsense. For that I return thanks to the immortal gods. We lie.
One lies, but one laughs. One affirms, but one doubts. The unexpected
bursts forth from the syllogism. That is fine. There are still human
beings here below who know how to open and close the surprise box of
the paradox merrily. This, ladies, which you are drinking with so
tranquil an air is Madeira wine, you must know, from the vineyard of
Coural das Freiras, which is three hundred and seventeen fathoms above
the level of the sea. Attention while you drink! three hundred and
seventeen fathoms! and Monsieur Bombarda, the magnificent eating-house
keeper, gives you those three hundred and seventeen fathoms for four
francs and fifty centimes.”


Again Fameuil interrupted him:—

“Tholomyès, your opinions fix the law. Who is your favorite author?”


“Ber—”


“Quin?”


“No; Choux.”


And Tholomyès continued:—

“Honor to Bombarda! He would equal Munophis of Elephanta if he could
but get me an Indian dancing-girl, and Thygelion of Chæronea if he
could bring me a Greek courtesan; for, oh, ladies! there were Bombardas
in Greece and in Egypt. Apuleius tells us of them. Alas! always the
same, and nothing new; nothing more unpublished by the creator in
creation! _Nil sub sole novum_, says Solomon; _amor omnibus idem_, says
Virgil; and Carabine mounts with Carabin into the bark at Saint-Cloud,
as Aspasia embarked with Pericles upon the fleet at Samos. One last
word. Do you know what Aspasia was, ladies? Although she lived at an
epoch when women had, as yet, no soul, she was a soul; a soul of a rosy
and purple hue, more ardent hued than fire, fresher than the dawn.
Aspasia was a creature in whom two extremes of womanhood met; she was
the goddess prostitute; Socrates plus Manon Lescaut. Aspasia was
created in case a mistress should be needed for Prometheus.”


Tholomyès, once started, would have found some difficulty in stopping,
had not a horse fallen down upon the quay just at that moment. The
shock caused the cart and the orator to come to a dead halt. It was a
Beauceron mare, old and thin, and one fit for the knacker, which was
dragging a very heavy cart. On arriving in front of Bombarda’s, the
worn-out, exhausted beast had refused to proceed any further. This
incident attracted a crowd. Hardly had the cursing and indignant carter
had time to utter with proper energy the sacramental word, _Mâtin_ (the
jade), backed up with a pitiless cut of the whip, when the jade fell,
never to rise again. On hearing the hubbub made by the passers-by,
Tholomyès’ merry auditors turned their heads, and Tholomyès took
advantage of the opportunity to bring his allocution to a close with
this melancholy strophe:—

“Elle était de ce monde ou coucous et carrosses
Ont le même destin;
Et, rosse, elle a vécu ce que vivant les rosses,
L’espace d’un mâtin!” 3

“Poor horse!” sighed Fantine.

And Dahlia exclaimed:—

“There is Fantine on the point of crying over horses. How can one be
such a pitiful fool as that!”


At that moment Favourite, folding her arms and throwing her head back,
looked resolutely at Tholomyès and said:—

“Come, now! the surprise?”


“Exactly. The moment has arrived,” replied Tholomyès. “Gentlemen, the
hour for giving these ladies a surprise has struck. Wait for us a
moment, ladies.”


“It begins with a kiss,” said Blachevelle.

“On the brow,” added Tholomyès.

Each gravely bestowed a kiss on his mistress’s brow; then all four
filed out through the door, with their fingers on their lips.

Favourite clapped her hands on their departure.

“It is beginning to be amusing already,” said she.

“Don’t be too long,” murmured Fantine; “we are waiting for you.”







When the young girls were left alone, they leaned two by two on the
window-sills, chatting, craning out their heads, and talking from one
window to the other.

They saw the young men emerge from the Café Bombarda arm in arm. The
latter turned round, made signs to them, smiled, and disappeared in
that dusty Sunday throng which makes a weekly invasion into the
Champs-Élysées.

“Don’t be long!” cried Fantine.

“What are they going to bring us?” said Zéphine.

“It will certainly be something pretty,” said Dahlia.

“For my part,” said Favourite, “I want it to be of gold.”


Their attention was soon distracted by the movements on the shore of
the lake, which they could see through the branches of the large trees,
and which diverted them greatly.

It was the hour for the departure of the mail-coaches and diligences.
Nearly all the stage-coaches for the south and west passed through the
Champs-Élysées. The majority followed the quay and went through the
Passy Barrier. From moment to moment, some huge vehicle, painted yellow
and black, heavily loaded, noisily harnessed, rendered shapeless by
trunks, tarpaulins, and valises, full of heads which immediately
disappeared, rushed through the crowd with all the sparks of a forge,
with dust for smoke, and an air of fury, grinding the pavements,
changing all the paving-stones into steels. This uproar delighted the
young girls. Favourite exclaimed:—

“What a row! One would say that it was a pile of chains flying away.”


It chanced that one of these vehicles, which they could only see with
difficulty through the thick elms, halted for a moment, then set out
again at a gallop. This surprised Fantine.

“That’s odd!” said she. “I thought the diligence never stopped.”


Favourite shrugged her shoulders.

“This Fantine is surprising. I am coming to take a look at her out of
curiosity. She is dazzled by the simplest things. Suppose a case: I am
a traveller; I say to the diligence, ‘I will go on in advance; you
shall pick me up on the quay as you pass.’ The diligence passes, sees
me, halts, and takes me. That is done every day. You do not know life,
my dear.”


In this manner a certain time elapsed. All at once Favourite made a
movement, like a person who is just waking up.

“Well,” said she, “and the surprise?”


“Yes, by the way,” joined in Dahlia, “the famous surprise?”


“They are a very long time about it!” said Fantine.

As Fantine concluded this sigh, the waiter who had served them at
dinner entered. He held in his hand something which resembled a letter.

“What is that?” demanded Favourite.

The waiter replied:—

“It is a paper that those gentlemen left for these ladies.”


“Why did you not bring it at once?”


“Because,” said the waiter, “the gentlemen ordered me not to deliver it
to the ladies for an hour.”


Favourite snatched the paper from the waiter’s hand. It was, in fact, a
letter.

“Stop!” said she; “there is no address; but this is what is written on
it—”


“THIS IS THE SURPRISE.”


She tore the letter open hastily, opened it, and read [she knew how to
read]:—

“OUR BELOVED:—

“You must know that we have parents. Parents—you do not know much about
such things. They are called fathers and mothers by the civil code,
which is puerile and honest. Now, these parents groan, these old folks
implore us, these good men and these good women call us prodigal sons;
they desire our return, and offer to kill calves for us. Being
virtuous, we obey them. At the hour when you read this, five fiery
horses will be bearing us to our papas and mammas. We are pulling up
our stakes, as Bossuet says. We are going; we are gone. We flee in the
arms of Laffitte and on the wings of Caillard. The Toulouse diligence
tears us from the abyss, and the abyss is you, O our little beauties!
We return to society, to duty, to respectability, at full trot, at the
rate of three leagues an hour. It is necessary for the good of the
country that we should be, like the rest of the world, prefects,
fathers of families, rural police, and councillors of state. Venerate
us. We are sacrificing ourselves. Mourn for us in haste, and replace us
with speed. If this letter lacerates you, do the same by it. Adieu.

“For the space of nearly two years we have made you happy. We bear you
no grudge for that.                                 “Signed:
BLACHEVELLE.
FAMUEIL.
LISTOLIER.
FÉLIX THOLOMYÈS.


“_Postscriptum_. The dinner is paid for.”


The four young women looked at each other.

Favourite was the first to break the silence.

“Well!” she exclaimed, “it’s a very pretty farce, all the same.”


“It is very droll,” said Zéphine.

“That must have been Blachevelle’s idea,” resumed Favourite. “It makes
me in love with him. No sooner is he gone than he is loved. This is an
adventure, indeed.”


“No,” said Dahlia; “it was one of Tholomyès’ ideas. That is evident.

“In that case,” retorted Favourite, “death to Blachevelle, and long
live Tholomyès!”


“Long live Tholomyès!” exclaimed Dahlia and Zéphine.

And they burst out laughing.

Fantine laughed with the rest.

An hour later, when she had returned to her room, she wept. It was her
first love affair, as we have said; she had given herself to this
Tholomyès as to a husband, and the poor girl had a child.




