Kabanata Kabanata 31 · FOUR AND FOUR

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.