





There was, at Montfermeil, near Paris, during the first quarter of this
century, a sort of cook-shop which no longer exists. This cook-shop was
kept by some people named Thénardier, husband and wife. It was situated
in Boulanger Lane. Over the door there was a board nailed flat against
the wall. Upon this board was painted something which resembled a man
carrying another man on his back, the latter wearing the big gilt
epaulettes of a general, with large silver stars; red spots represented
blood; the rest of the picture consisted of smoke, and probably
represented a battle. Below ran this inscription: AT THE SIGN OF
SERGEANT OF WATERLOO (_Au Sargent de Waterloo_).

Nothing is more common than a cart or a truck at the door of a
hostelry. Nevertheless, the vehicle, or, to speak more accurately, the
fragment of a vehicle, which encumbered the street in front of the
cook-shop of the _Sergeant of Waterloo_, one evening in the spring of
1818, would certainly have attracted, by its mass, the attention of any
painter who had passed that way.

It was the fore-carriage of one of those trucks which are used in
wooded tracts of country, and which serve to transport thick planks and
the trunks of trees. This fore-carriage was composed of a massive iron
axle-tree with a pivot, into which was fitted a heavy shaft, and which
was supported by two huge wheels. The whole thing was compact,
overwhelming, and misshapen. It seemed like the gun-carriage of an
enormous cannon. The ruts of the road had bestowed on the wheels, the
fellies, the hub, the axle, and the shaft, a layer of mud, a hideous
yellowish daubing hue, tolerably like that with which people are fond
of ornamenting cathedrals. The wood was disappearing under mud, and the
iron beneath rust. Under the axle-tree hung, like drapery, a huge
chain, worthy of some Goliath of a convict. This chain suggested, not
the beams, which it was its office to transport, but the mastodons and
mammoths which it might have served to harness; it had the air of the
galleys, but of cyclopean and superhuman galleys, and it seemed to have
been detached from some monster. Homer would have bound Polyphemus with
it, and Shakespeare, Caliban.

Why was that fore-carriage of a truck in that place in the street? In
the first place, to encumber the street; next, in order that it might
finish the process of rusting. There is a throng of institutions in the
old social order, which one comes across in this fashion as one walks
about outdoors, and which have no other reasons for existence than the
above.

The centre of the chain swung very near the ground in the middle, and
in the loop, as in the rope of a swing, there were seated and grouped,
on that particular evening, in exquisite interlacement, two little
girls; one about two years and a half old, the other, eighteen months;
the younger in the arms of the other. A handkerchief, cleverly knotted
about them, prevented their falling out. A mother had caught sight of
that frightful chain, and had said, “Come! there’s a plaything for my
children.”


The two children, who were dressed prettily and with some elegance,
were radiant with pleasure; one would have said that they were two
roses amid old iron; their eyes were a triumph; their fresh cheeks were
full of laughter. One had chestnut hair; the other, brown. Their
innocent faces were two delighted surprises; a blossoming shrub which
grew near wafted to the passers-by perfumes which seemed to emanate
from them; the child of eighteen months displayed her pretty little
bare stomach with the chaste indecency of childhood. Above and around
these two delicate heads, all made of happiness and steeped in light,
the gigantic fore-carriage, black with rust, almost terrible, all
entangled in curves and wild angles, rose in a vault, like the entrance
of a cavern. A few paces apart, crouching down upon the threshold of
the hostelry, the mother, not a very prepossessing woman, by the way,
though touching at that moment, was swinging the two children by means
of a long cord, watching them carefully, for fear of accidents, with
that animal and celestial expression which is peculiar to maternity. At
every backward and forward swing the hideous links emitted a strident
sound, which resembled a cry of rage; the little girls were in
ecstasies; the setting sun mingled in this joy, and nothing could be
more charming than this caprice of chance which had made of a chain of
Titans the swing of cherubim.

As she rocked her little ones, the mother hummed in a discordant voice
a romance then celebrated:—

“It must be, said a warrior.”


Her song, and the contemplation of her daughters, prevented her hearing
and seeing what was going on in the street.

In the meantime, some one had approached her, as she was beginning the
first couplet of the romance, and suddenly she heard a voice saying
very near her ear:—

“You have two beautiful children there, Madame.”


“To the fair and tender Imogene—”


replied the mother, continuing her romance; then she turned her head.

A woman stood before her, a few paces distant. This woman also had a
child, which she carried in her arms.

She was carrying, in addition, a large carpet-bag, which seemed very
heavy.

This woman’s child was one of the most divine creatures that it is
possible to behold. It was a girl, two or three years of age. She could
have entered into competition with the two other little ones, so far as
the coquetry of her dress was concerned; she wore a cap of fine linen,
ribbons on her bodice, and Valenciennes lace on her cap. The folds of
her skirt were raised so as to permit a view of her white, firm, and
dimpled leg. She was admirably rosy and healthy. The little beauty
inspired a desire to take a bite from the apples of her cheeks. Of her
eyes nothing could be known, except that they must be very large, and
that they had magnificent lashes. She was asleep.

She slept with that slumber of absolute confidence peculiar to her age.
The arms of mothers are made of tenderness; in them children sleep
profoundly.

As for the mother, her appearance was sad and poverty-stricken. She was
dressed like a working-woman who is inclined to turn into a peasant
again. She was young. Was she handsome? Perhaps; but in that attire it
was not apparent. Her hair, a golden lock of which had escaped, seemed
very thick, but was severely concealed beneath an ugly, tight, close,
nun-like cap, tied under the chin. A smile displays beautiful teeth
when one has them; but she did not smile. Her eyes did not seem to have
been dry for a very long time. She was pale; she had a very weary and
rather sickly appearance. She gazed upon her daughter asleep in her
arms with the air peculiar to a mother who has nursed her own child. A
large blue handkerchief, such as the Invalides use, was folded into a
fichu, and concealed her figure clumsily. Her hands were sunburnt and
all dotted with freckles, her forefinger was hardened and lacerated
with the needle; she wore a cloak of coarse brown woollen stuff, a
linen gown, and coarse shoes. It was Fantine.

It was Fantine, but difficult to recognize. Nevertheless, on
scrutinizing her attentively, it was evident that she still retained
her beauty. A melancholy fold, which resembled the beginning of irony,
wrinkled her right cheek. As for her toilette, that aerial toilette of
muslin and ribbons, which seemed made of mirth, of folly, and of music,
full of bells, and perfumed with lilacs had vanished like that
beautiful and dazzling hoar-frost which is mistaken for diamonds in the
sunlight; it melts and leaves the branch quite black.

Ten months had elapsed since the “pretty farce.”


What had taken place during those ten months? It can be divined.

After abandonment, straightened circumstances. Fantine had immediately
lost sight of Favourite, Zéphine and Dahlia; the bond once broken on
the side of the men, it was loosed between the women; they would have
been greatly astonished had any one told them a fortnight later, that
they had been friends; there no longer existed any reason for such a
thing. Fantine had remained alone. The father of her child gone,—alas!
such ruptures are irrevocable,—she found herself absolutely isolated,
minus the habit of work and plus the taste for pleasure. Drawn away by
her _liaison_ with Tholomyès to disdain the pretty trade which she
knew, she had neglected to keep her market open; it was now closed to
her. She had no resource. Fantine barely knew how to read, and did not
know how to write; in her childhood she had only been taught to sign
her name; she had a public letter-writer indite an epistle to
Tholomyès, then a second, then a third. Tholomyès replied to none of
them. Fantine heard the gossips say, as they looked at her child: “Who
takes those children seriously! One only shrugs one’s shoulders over
such children!” Then she thought of Tholomyès, who had shrugged his
shoulders over his child, and who did not take that innocent being
seriously; and her heart grew gloomy toward that man. But what was she
to do? She no longer knew to whom to apply. She had committed a fault,
but the foundation of her nature, as will be remembered, was modesty
and virtue. She was vaguely conscious that she was on the verge of
falling into distress, and of gliding into a worse state. Courage was
necessary; she possessed it, and held herself firm. The idea of
returning to her native town of M. sur M. occurred to her. There, some
one might possibly know her and give her work; yes, but it would be
necessary to conceal her fault. In a confused way she perceived the
necessity of a separation which would be more painful than the first
one. Her heart contracted, but she took her resolution. Fantine, as we
shall see, had the fierce bravery of life. She had already valiantly
renounced finery, had dressed herself in linen, and had put all her
silks, all her ornaments, all her ribbons, and all her laces on her
daughter, the only vanity which was left to her, and a holy one it was.
She sold all that she had, which produced for her two hundred francs;
her little debts paid, she had only about eighty francs left. At the
age of twenty-two, on a beautiful spring morning, she quitted Paris,
bearing her child on her back. Any one who had seen these two pass
would have had pity on them. This woman had, in all the world, nothing
but her child, and the child had, in all the world, no one but this
woman. Fantine had nursed her child, and this had tired her chest, and
she coughed a little.

We shall have no further occasion to speak of M. Félix Tholomyès. Let
us confine ourselves to saying, that, twenty years later, under King
Louis Philippe, he was a great provincial lawyer, wealthy and
influential, a wise elector, and a very severe juryman; he was still a
man of pleasure.

Towards the middle of the day, after having, from time to time, for the
sake of resting herself, travelled, for three or four sous a league, in
what was then known as the _Petites Voitures des Environs de Paris_,
the “little suburban coach service,” Fantine found herself at
Montfermeil, in the alley Boulanger.

As she passed the Thénardier hostelry, the two little girls, blissful
in the monster swing, had dazzled her in a manner, and she had halted
in front of that vision of joy.

Charms exist. These two little girls were a charm to this mother.

She gazed at them in much emotion. The presence of angels is an
announcement of Paradise. She thought that, above this inn, she beheld
the mysterious HERE of Providence. These two little creatures were
evidently happy. She gazed at them, she admired them, in such emotion
that at the moment when their mother was recovering her breath between
two couplets of her song, she could not refrain from addressing to her
the remark which we have just read:—

“You have two pretty children, Madame.”


The most ferocious creatures are disarmed by caresses bestowed on their
young.

The mother raised her head and thanked her, and bade the wayfarer sit
down on the bench at the door, she herself being seated on the
threshold. The two women began to chat.

“My name is Madame Thénardier,” said the mother of the two little
girls. “We keep this inn.”


Then, her mind still running on her romance, she resumed humming
between her teeth:—

“It must be so; I am a knight,
And I am off to Palestine.”


This Madame Thénardier was a sandy-complexioned woman, thin and
angular—the type of the soldier’s wife in all its unpleasantness; and
what was odd, with a languishing air, which she owed to her perusal of
romances. She was a simpering, but masculine creature. Old romances
produce that effect when rubbed against the imagination of cook-shop
woman. She was still young; she was barely thirty. If this crouching
woman had stood upright, her lofty stature and her frame of a
perambulating colossus suitable for fairs, might have frightened the
traveller at the outset, troubled her confidence, and disturbed what
caused what we have to relate to vanish. A person who is seated instead
of standing erect—destinies hang upon such a thing as that.

The traveller told her story, with slight modifications.

That she was a working-woman; that her husband was dead; that her work
in Paris had failed her, and that she was on her way to seek it
elsewhere, in her own native parts; that she had left Paris that
morning on foot; that, as she was carrying her child, and felt
fatigued, she had got into the Villemomble coach when she met it; that
from Villemomble she had come to Montfermeil on foot; that the little
one had walked a little, but not much, because she was so young, and
that she had been obliged to take her up, and the jewel had fallen
asleep.

At this word she bestowed on her daughter a passionate kiss, which woke
her. The child opened her eyes, great blue eyes like her mother’s, and
looked at—what? Nothing; with that serious and sometimes severe air of
little children, which is a mystery of their luminous innocence in the
presence of our twilight of virtue. One would say that they feel
themselves to be angels, and that they know us to be men. Then the
child began to laugh; and although the mother held fast to her, she
slipped to the ground with the unconquerable energy of a little being
which wished to run. All at once she caught sight of the two others in
the swing, stopped short, and put out her tongue, in sign of
admiration.

Mother Thénardier released her daughters, made them descend from the
swing, and said:—

“Now amuse yourselves, all three of you.”


Children become acquainted quickly at that age, and at the expiration
of a minute the little Thénardiers were playing with the newcomer at
making holes in the ground, which was an immense pleasure.

The newcomer was very gay; the goodness of the mother is written in the
gayety of the child; she had seized a scrap of wood which served her
for a shovel, and energetically dug a cavity big enough for a fly. The
grave-digger’s business becomes a subject for laughter when performed
by a child.

The two women pursued their chat.

“What is your little one’s name?”


“Cosette.”


For Cosette, read Euphrasie. The child’s name was Euphrasie. But out of
Euphrasie the mother had made Cosette by that sweet and graceful
instinct of mothers and of the populace which changes Josepha into
Pepita, and Françoise into Sillette. It is a sort of derivative which
disarranges and disconcerts the whole science of etymologists. We have
known a grandmother who succeeded in turning Theodore into Gnon.

“How old is she?”


“She is going on three.”


“That is the age of my eldest.”


In the meantime, the three little girls were grouped in an attitude of
profound anxiety and blissfulness; an event had happened; a big worm
had emerged from the ground, and they were afraid; and they were in
ecstasies over it.

Their radiant brows touched each other; one would have said that there
were three heads in one aureole.

“How easily children get acquainted at once!” exclaimed Mother
Thénardier; “one would swear that they were three sisters!”


This remark was probably the spark which the other mother had been
waiting for. She seized the Thénardier’s hand, looked at her fixedly,
and said:—

“Will you keep my child for me?”


The Thénardier made one of those movements of surprise which signify
neither assent nor refusal.

Cosette’s mother continued:—

“You see, I cannot take my daughter to the country. My work will not
permit it. With a child one can find no situation. People are
ridiculous in the country. It was the good God who caused me to pass
your inn. When I caught sight of your little ones, so pretty, so clean,
and so happy, it overwhelmed me. I said: ‘Here is a good mother. That
is just the thing; that will make three sisters.’ And then, it will not
be long before I return. Will you keep my child for me?”


“I must see about it,” replied the Thénardier.

“I will give you six francs a month.”


Here a man’s voice called from the depths of the cook-shop:—

“Not for less than seven francs. And six months paid in advance.”


“Six times seven makes forty-two,” said the Thénardier.

“I will give it,” said the mother.

“And fifteen francs in addition for preliminary expenses,” added the
man’s voice.

“Total, fifty-seven francs,” said Madame Thénardier. And she hummed
vaguely, with these figures:—

“It must be, said a warrior.”


“I will pay it,” said the mother. “I have eighty francs. I shall have
enough left to reach the country, by travelling on foot. I shall earn
money there, and as soon as I have a little I will return for my
darling.”


The man’s voice resumed:—

“The little one has an outfit?”


“That is my husband,” said the Thénardier.

“Of course she has an outfit, the poor treasure.—I understood perfectly
that it was your husband.—And a beautiful outfit, too! a senseless
outfit, everything by the dozen, and silk gowns like a lady. It is
here, in my carpet-bag.”


“You must hand it over,” struck in the man’s voice again.

“Of course I shall give it to you,” said the mother. “It would be very
queer if I were to leave my daughter quite naked!”


The master’s face appeared.

“That’s good,” said he.

The bargain was concluded. The mother passed the night at the inn, gave
up her money and left her child, fastened her carpet-bag once more, now
reduced in volume by the removal of the outfit, and light henceforth
and set out on the following morning, intending to return soon. People
arrange such departures tranquilly; but they are despairs!

A neighbor of the Thénardiers met this mother as she was setting out,
and came back with the remark:—

“I have just seen a woman crying in the street so that it was enough to
rend your heart.”


When Cosette’s mother had taken her departure, the man said to the
woman:—

“That will serve to pay my note for one hundred and ten francs which
falls due to-morrow; I lacked fifty francs. Do you know that I should
have had a bailiff and a protest after me? You played the mouse-trap
nicely with your young ones.”


“Without suspecting it,” said the woman.






The mouse which had been caught was a pitiful specimen; but the cat
rejoices even over a lean mouse.

Who were these Thénardiers?

Let us say a word or two of them now. We will complete the sketch later
on.

These beings belonged to that bastard class composed of coarse people
who have been successful, and of intelligent people who have descended
in the scale, which is between the class called “middle” and the class
denominated as “inferior,” and which combines some of the defects of
the second with nearly all the vices of the first, without possessing
the generous impulse of the workingman nor the honest order of the
bourgeois.

They were of those dwarfed natures which, if a dull fire chances to
warm them up, easily become monstrous. There was in the woman a
substratum of the brute, and in the man the material for a blackguard.
Both were susceptible, in the highest degree, of the sort of hideous
progress which is accomplished in the direction of evil. There exist
crab-like souls which are continually retreating towards the darkness,
retrograding in life rather than advancing, employing experience to
augment their deformity, growing incessantly worse, and becoming more
and more impregnated with an ever-augmenting blackness. This man and
woman possessed such souls.

Thénardier, in particular, was troublesome for a physiognomist. One can
only look at some men to distrust them; for one feels that they are
dark in both directions. They are uneasy in the rear and threatening in
front. There is something of the unknown about them. One can no more
answer for what they have done than for what they will do. The shadow
which they bear in their glance denounces them. From merely hearing
them utter a word or seeing them make a gesture, one obtains a glimpse
of sombre secrets in their past and of sombre mysteries in their
future.

This Thénardier, if he himself was to be believed, had been a soldier—a
sergeant, he said. He had probably been through the campaign of 1815,
and had even conducted himself with tolerable valor, it would seem. We
shall see later on how much truth there was in this. The sign of his
hostelry was in allusion to one of his feats of arms. He had painted it
himself; for he knew how to do a little of everything, and badly.

It was at the epoch when the ancient classical romance which, after
having been _Clélie_, was no longer anything but _Lodoïska_, still
noble, but ever more and more vulgar, having fallen from Mademoiselle
de Scudéri to Madame Bournon-Malarme, and from Madame de Lafayette to
Madame Barthélemy-Hadot, was setting the loving hearts of the
portresses of Paris aflame, and even ravaging the suburbs to some
extent. Madame Thénardier was just intelligent enough to read this sort
of books. She lived on them. In them she drowned what brains she
possessed. This had given her, when very young, and even a little
later, a sort of pensive attitude towards her husband, a scamp of a
certain depth, a ruffian lettered to the extent of the grammar, coarse
and fine at one and the same time, but, so far as sentimentalism was
concerned, given to the perusal of Pigault-Lebrun, and “in what
concerns the sex,” as he said in his jargon—a downright, unmitigated
lout. His wife was twelve or fifteen years younger than he was. Later
on, when her hair, arranged in a romantically drooping fashion, began
to grow gray, when the Megæra began to be developed from the Pamela,
the female Thénardier was nothing but a coarse, vicious woman, who had
dabbled in stupid romances. Now, one cannot read nonsense with
impunity. The result was that her eldest daughter was named Éponine; as
for the younger, the poor little thing came near being called Gulnare;
I know not to what diversion, effected by a romance of Ducray-Dumenil,
she owed the fact that she merely bore the name of Azelma.

However, we will remark by the way, everything was not ridiculous and
superficial in that curious epoch to which we are alluding, and which
may be designated as the anarchy of baptismal names. By the side of
this romantic element which we have just indicated there is the social
symptom. It is not rare for the neatherd’s boy nowadays to bear the
name of Arthur, Alfred, or Alphonse, and for the vicomte—if there are
still any vicomtes—to be called Thomas, Pierre, or Jacques. This
displacement, which places the “elegant” name on the plebeian and the
rustic name on the aristocrat, is nothing else than an eddy of
equality. The irresistible penetration of the new inspiration is there
as everywhere else. Beneath this apparent discord there is a great and
a profound thing,—the French Revolution.






It is not all in all sufficient to be wicked in order to prosper. The
cook-shop was in a bad way.

Thanks to the traveller’s fifty-seven francs, Thénardier had been able
to avoid a protest and to honor his signature. On the following month
they were again in need of money. The woman took Cosette’s outfit to
Paris, and pawned it at the pawnbroker’s for sixty francs. As soon as
that sum was spent, the Thénardiers grew accustomed to look on the
little girl merely as a child whom they were caring for out of charity;
and they treated her accordingly. As she had no longer any clothes,
they dressed her in the cast-off petticoats and chemises of the
Thénardier brats; that is to say, in rags. They fed her on what all the
rest had left—a little better than the dog, a little worse than the
cat. Moreover, the cat and the dog were her habitual table-companions;
Cosette ate with them under the table, from a wooden bowl similar to
theirs.

The mother, who had established herself, as we shall see later on, at
M. sur M., wrote, or, more correctly, caused to be written, a letter
every month, that she might have news of her child. The Thénardiers
replied invariably, “Cosette is doing wonderfully well.”


At the expiration of the first six months the mother sent seven francs
for the seventh month, and continued her remittances with tolerable
regularity from month to month. The year was not completed when
Thénardier said: “A fine favor she is doing us, in sooth! What does she
expect us to do with her seven francs?” and he wrote to demand twelve
francs. The mother, whom they had persuaded into the belief that her
child was happy, “and was coming on well,” submitted, and forwarded the
twelve francs.

Certain natures cannot love on the one hand without hating on the
other. Mother Thénardier loved her two daughters passionately, which
caused her to hate the stranger.

It is sad to think that the love of a mother can possess villainous
aspects. Little as was the space occupied by Cosette, it seemed to her
as though it were taken from her own, and that that little child
diminished the air which her daughters breathed. This woman, like many
women of her sort, had a load of caresses and a burden of blows and
injuries to dispense each day. If she had not had Cosette, it is
certain that her daughters, idolized as they were, would have received
the whole of it; but the stranger did them the service to divert the
blows to herself. Her daughters received nothing but caresses. Cosette
could not make a motion which did not draw down upon her head a heavy
shower of violent blows and unmerited chastisement. The sweet, feeble
being, who should not have understood anything of this world or of God,
incessantly punished, scolded, ill-used, beaten, and seeing beside her
two little creatures like herself, who lived in a ray of dawn!

Madame Thénardier was vicious with Cosette. Éponine and Azelma were
vicious. Children at that age are only copies of their mother. The size
is smaller; that is all.

A year passed; then another.

People in the village said:—

“Those Thénardiers are good people. They are not rich, and yet they are
bringing up a poor child who was abandoned on their hands!”


They thought that Cosette’s mother had forgotten her.

In the meanwhile, Thénardier, having learned, it is impossible to say
by what obscure means, that the child was probably a bastard, and that
the mother could not acknowledge it, exacted fifteen francs a month,
saying that “the creature” was growing and “eating,” and threatening to
send her away. “Let her not bother me,” he exclaimed, “or I’ll fire her
brat right into the middle of her secrets. I must have an increase.”
The mother paid the fifteen francs.

From year to year the child grew, and so did her wretchedness.

As long as Cosette was little, she was the scape-goat of the two other
children; as soon as she began to develop a little, that is to say,
before she was even five years old, she became the servant of the
household.

Five years old! the reader will say; that is not probable. Alas! it is
true. Social suffering begins at all ages. Have we not recently seen
the trial of a man named Dumollard, an orphan turned bandit, who, from
the age of five, as the official documents state, being alone in the
world, “worked for his living and stole”?

Cosette was made to run on errands, to sweep the rooms, the courtyard,
the street, to wash the dishes, to even carry burdens. The Thénardiers
considered themselves all the more authorized to behave in this manner,
since the mother, who was still at M. sur M., had become irregular in
her payments. Some months she was in arrears.

If this mother had returned to Montfermeil at the end of these three
years, she would not have recognized her child. Cosette, so pretty and
rosy on her arrival in that house, was now thin and pale. She had an
indescribably uneasy look. “The sly creature,” said the Thénardiers.

Injustice had made her peevish, and misery had made her ugly. Nothing
remained to her except her beautiful eyes, which inspired pain,
because, large as they were, it seemed as though one beheld in them a
still larger amount of sadness.

It was a heart-breaking thing to see this poor child, not yet six years
old, shivering in the winter in her old rags of linen, full of holes,
sweeping the street before daylight, with an enormous broom in her tiny
red hands, and a tear in her great eyes.

[Illustration: Cossette Sweeping]

She was called the _Lark_ in the neighborhood. The populace, who are
fond of these figures of speech, had taken a fancy to bestow this name
on this trembling, frightened, and shivering little creature, no bigger
than a bird, who was awake every morning before any one else in the
house or the village, and was always in the street or the fields before
daybreak.

Only the little lark never sang.




