Chương Chương 41 · THE HISTORY OF A PROGRESS IN BLACK GLASS TRINKETS

And in the meantime, what had become of that mother who according to

the people at Montfermeil, seemed to have abandoned her child? Where

was she? What was she doing?

After leaving her little Cosette with the Thénardiers, she had

continued her journey, and had reached M. sur M.

This, it will be remembered, was in 1818.

Fantine had quitted her province ten years before. M. sur M. had

changed its aspect. While Fantine had been slowly descending from

wretchedness to wretchedness, her native town had prospered.

About two years previously one of those industrial facts which are the

grand events of small districts had taken place.

This detail is important, and we regard it as useful to develop it at

length; we should almost say, to underline it.

From time immemorial, M. sur M. had had for its special industry the

imitation of English jet and the black glass trinkets of Germany. This

industry had always vegetated, on account of the high price of the raw

material, which reacted on the manufacture. At the moment when Fantine

returned to M. sur M., an unheard-of transformation had taken place in

the production of “black goods.” Towards the close of 1815 a man, a

stranger, had established himself in the town, and had been inspired

with the idea of substituting, in this manufacture, gum-lac for resin,

and, for bracelets in particular, slides of sheet-iron simply laid

together, for slides of soldered sheet-iron.

This very small change had effected a revolution.

This very small change had, in fact, prodigiously reduced the cost of

the raw material, which had rendered it possible in the first place, to

raise the price of manufacture, a benefit to the country; in the second

place, to improve the workmanship, an advantage to the consumer; in the

third place, to sell at a lower price, while trebling the profit, which

was a benefit to the manufacturer.

Thus three results ensued from one idea.

In less than three years the inventor of this process had become rich,

which is good, and had made every one about him rich, which is better.

He was a stranger in the Department. Of his origin, nothing was known;

of the beginning of his career, very little. It was rumored that he had

come to town with very little money, a few hundred francs at the most.

It was from this slender capital, enlisted in the service of an

ingenious idea, developed by method and thought, that he had drawn his

own fortune, and the fortune of the whole countryside.

On his arrival at M. sur M. he had only the garments, the appearance,

and the language of a workingman.

It appears that on the very day when he made his obscure entry into the

little town of M. sur M., just at nightfall, on a December evening,

knapsack on back and thorn club in hand, a large fire had broken out in

the town-hall. This man had rushed into the flames and saved, at the

risk of his own life, two children who belonged to the captain of the

gendarmerie; this is why they had forgotten to ask him for his

passport. Afterwards they had learned his name. He was called Father

Madeleine.