第 三十八 章 · ONE MOTHER MEETS ANOTHER MOTHER

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.