第 二百五十 章 · THE MALICIOUS PLAYFULNESS OF THE WIND

Since 1823, when the tavern of Montfermeil was on the way to shipwreck

and was being gradually engulfed, not in the abyss of a bankruptcy, but

in the cesspool of petty debts, the Thénardier pair had had two other

children; both males. That made five; two girls and three boys.

Madame Thénardier had got rid of the last two, while they were still

young and very small, with remarkable luck.

_Got rid of_ is the word. There was but a mere fragment of nature in

that woman. A phenomenon, by the way, of which there is more than one

example extant. Like the Maréchale de La Mothe-Houdancourt, the

Thénardier was a mother to her daughters only. There her maternity

ended. Her hatred of the human race began with her own sons. In the

direction of her sons her evil disposition was uncompromising, and her

heart had a lugubrious wall in that quarter. As the reader has seen,

she detested the eldest; she cursed the other two. Why? Because. The

most terrible of motives, the most unanswerable of retorts—Because. “I

have no need of a litter of squalling brats,” said this mother.

Let us explain how the Thénardiers had succeeded in getting rid of

their last two children; and even in drawing profit from the operation.

The woman Magnon, who was mentioned a few pages further back, was the

same one who had succeeded in making old Gillenormand support the two

children which she had had. She lived on the Quai des Célestins, at the

corner of this ancient street of the Petit-Musc which afforded her the

opportunity of changing her evil repute into good odor. The reader will

remember the great epidemic of croup which ravaged the river districts

of the Seine in Paris thirty-five years ago, and of which science took

advantage to make experiments on a grand scale as to the efficacy of

inhalations of alum, so beneficially replaced at the present day by the

external tincture of iodine. During this epidemic, the Magnon lost both

her boys, who were still very young, one in the morning, the other in

the evening of the same day. This was a blow. These children were

precious to their mother; they represented eighty francs a month. These

eighty francs were punctually paid in the name of M. Gillenormand, by

collector of his rents, M. Barge, a retired tip-staff, in the Rue du

Roi-de-Sicile. The children dead, the income was at an end. The Magnon

sought an expedient. In that dark free-masonry of evil of which she

formed a part, everything is known, all secrets are kept, and all lend

mutual aid. Magnon needed two children; the Thénardiers had two. The

same sex, the same age. A good arrangement for the one, a good

investment for the other. The little Thénardiers became little Magnons.

Magnon quitted the Quai des Célestins and went to live in the Rue

Clocheperce. In Paris, the identity which binds an individual to

himself is broken between one street and another.

The registry office being in no way warned, raised no objections, and

the substitution was effected in the most simple manner in the world.

Only, the Thénardier exacted for this loan of her children, ten francs

a month, which Magnon promised to pay, and which she actually did pay.

It is unnecessary to add that M. Gillenormand continued to perform his

compact. He came to see the children every six months. He did not

perceive the change. “Monsieur,” Magnon said to him, “how much they

resemble you!”

Thénardier, to whom avatars were easy, seized this occasion to become

Jondrette. His two daughters and Gavroche had hardly had time to

discover that they had two little brothers. When a certain degree of

misery is reached, one is overpowered with a sort of spectral

indifference, and one regards human beings as though they were

spectres. Your nearest relations are often no more for you than vague

shadowy forms, barely outlined against a nebulous background of life

and easily confounded again with the invisible.

On the evening of the day when she had handed over her two little ones

to Magnon, with express intention of renouncing them forever, the

Thénardier had felt, or had appeared to feel, a scruple. She said to

her husband: “But this is abandoning our children!” Thénardier,

masterful and phlegmatic, cauterized the scruple with this saying:

“Jean Jacques Rousseau did even better!” From scruples, the mother

proceeded to uneasiness: “But what if the police were to annoy us? Tell

me, Monsieur Thénardier, is what we have done permissible?” Thénardier

replied: “Everything is permissible. No one will see anything but true

blue in it. Besides, no one has any interest in looking closely after

children who have not a sou.”

Magnon was a sort of fashionable woman in the sphere of crime. She was

careful about her toilet. She shared her lodgings, which were furnished

in an affected and wretched style, with a clever gallicized English

thief. This English woman, who had become a naturalized Parisienne,

recommended by very wealthy relations, intimately connected with the

medals in the Library and Mademoiselle Mar’s diamonds, became

celebrated later on in judicial accounts. She was called _Mamselle

Miss_.

The two little creatures who had fallen to Magnon had no reason to

complain of their lot. Recommended by the eighty francs, they were well

cared for, as is everything from which profit is derived; they were

neither badly clothed, nor badly fed; they were treated almost like

“little gentlemen,”—better by their false mother than by their real

one. Magnon played the lady, and talked no thieves’ slang in their

presence.

Thus passed several years. Thénardier augured well from the fact. One

day, he chanced to say to Magnon as she handed him his monthly stipend

of ten francs: “The father must give them some education.”

All at once, these two poor children, who had up to that time been

protected tolerably well, even by their evil fate, were abruptly hurled

into life and forced to begin it for themselves.

A wholesale arrest of malefactors, like that in the Jondrette garret,

necessarily complicated by investigations and subsequent

incarcerations, is a veritable disaster for that hideous and occult

counter-society which pursues its existence beneath public society; an

adventure of this description entails all sorts of catastrophes in that

sombre world. The Thénardier catastrophe involved the catastrophe of

Magnon.

One day, a short time after Magnon had handed to Éponine the note

relating to the Rue Plumet, a sudden raid was made by the police in the

Rue Clocheperce; Magnon was seized, as was also Mamselle Miss; and all

the inhabitants of the house, which was of a suspicious character, were

gathered into the net. While this was going on, the two little boys

were playing in the back yard, and saw nothing of the raid. When they

tried to enter the house again, they found the door fastened and the

house empty. A cobbler opposite called them to him, and delivered to

them a paper which “their mother” had left for them. On this paper

there was an address: _M. Barge, collector of rents, Rue du

Roi-de-Sicile, No_. 8. The proprietor of the stall said to them: “You

cannot live here any longer. Go there. It is nearby. The first street

on the left. Ask your way from this paper.”

The children set out, the elder leading the younger, and holding in his

hand the paper which was to guide them. It was cold, and his benumbed

little fingers could not close very firmly, and they did not keep a

very good hold on the paper. At the corner of the Rue Clocheperce, a

gust of wind tore it from him, and as night was falling, the child was

not able to find it again.

They began to wander aimlessly through the streets.