Les Miserables (abridged) (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) (21 page)

A brilliant face, delicate profile, eyes of a deep blue, heavy eyelashes, small, arching feet, the wrists and ankles neatly encased, the white skin showing here and there the azure aborescence of the veins; a cheek small and fresh, a neck robust as that of Egean Juno; the nape firm and supple, shoulders modelled as if by Coustou, with a voluptuous dimple in the centre, just visible through the muslin: a gaiety tempered with reverie, sculptured and exquisite—such was Fantine, and you divined beneath this dress and these ribbons a statue, and in this statue a soul.

Fantine was beautiful, without being too conscious of it. Those rare dreamers, the mysterious priests of the beautiful, who silently compare all things with perfection, would have had a dim vision in this little workwoman, through the transparency of Parisian grace, of the ancient sacred Euphony. This daughter of obscurity had race. She possessed both types of beauty—style and rhythm. Style is the force of the ideal, rhythm is its movement.

We have said that Fantine was joy; Fantine also was modesty.

For an observer who had studied her attentively would have found through all this intoxication of youth, of the season, and of love, an unconquerable expression of reserve and modesty. She still seemed surprised at having a lover. This chaste restraint is the shade which separates Psyche from Venus. Fantine had the long, white, slender fingers of the vestals that stir the ashes of the sacred fire with a golden rod.
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Although she would have refused nothing to Tholomyès, as we shall see only too well, her face, in repose, was in the highest degree maidenly; a kind of serious and almost austere dignity suddenly possessed it at times, and nothing could be more strange or disquieting than to see gaiety vanish there so quickly, and reflection instantly succeed to delight. This sudden seriousness, sometimes strangely marked, resembled the disdain of a goddess. Her forehead, nose, and chin presented that equilibrium of line, quite distinct from the equilibrium of proportion, which produces harmony of features; in the characteristic interval which separates the base of the nose from the upper lip, she had that almost imperceptible but charming fold, the mysterious sign of chastity, which enamoured Barbarossa with a Diana, found in the excavations of Iconium.
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Love is a fault; be it so. Fantine was innocence floating upon the surface of this fault.
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THAT DAY was sunshine from one end to the other. All nature seemed to be out on a holiday. The flowerbeds of Saint Cloud were balmy with perfumes ; the breeze from the Seine gently waved the leaves; the boughs were gesticulating in the wind; the bees were pillaging the jessamine, a whole gypsy crew of butterflies had settled in the milfoil, clover, and wild oats. The august park of the King of France was invaded by a swarm of vagabonds, the birds.

The four joyous couples shone resplendently in concert with the sunshine, the flowers, the fields, and the trees.

And in this paradisaical community, speaking, singing, running, dancing, chasing butterflies, gathering bindweed, wetting their pink open-worked stockings in the high grass, fresh, wild, but not wicked, stealing kisses from each other indiscriminately now and then, all except Fantine, who was shut up in her vague, dreary, severe resistance, and who was in love. “You always have the air of being out of sorts,” said Favourite to her.

These are true pleasures. These passages in the lives of happy couples are a profound appeal to life and nature, and call forth endearment and light from everything. There was once upon a time a fairy, who created meadows and trees expressly for lovers. Thence, among the groves, that everlasting school for lovers, always in session. Thence the popularity of spring among thinkers. The patrician and the plebeian, the duke and peer, and the magistrate, the men of the court, and the men of the town, as was said in olden times, all play a part in this festivity. They laugh, they look for each other, the air seems filled with a new brightness; what a transfiguration is it to love! Law clerks are gods. And the little shrieks, the pursuits among the grass, the waists encircled by stealth, that silly chatter which is melody, that adoration which breaks forth in the way one says a syllable, those cherries snatched from one pair of lips by another—all flame up, and become transformed into celestial glories. Beautiful girls lavish their charms with sweet prodigality. We fancy that it will never end. Philosophers, poets, painters behold these ecstasies and know not what to make of them. So dazzling are they. The departure for Cythera! exclaims Watteau ; Lancret, the painter of the common man, contemplates his bourgeois soaring in the sky; Diderot stretches out his arms to all these loves, and d‘Urfé associates them with the Druids.

After breakfast, the four couples went to see, in what was then called the king’s garden plot, a plant newly arrived from the Indies, the name of which escapes us at present, and which at this time was attracting all Paris to Saint Cloud: it was a strange and beautiful shrub with a long stalk, the innumerable branches of which, fine as threads, tangled, and leafless, were covered with millions of little white blossoms, which gave it the appearance of flowing hair, powdered with flowers. There was always a crowd admiring it.

When they had viewed the shrub, Tholomyès exclaimed, “I propose donkeys,” and making a bargain with a donkey-driver, they returned through Vanvres and Issy. At Issy, they had an adventure. The park, a National Preserve, owned at this time by the munitions manufacturer Bourguin, was by sheer good luck open. They passed through the grating, visited the statue of a hermit in his grotto, and tried the little, mysterious effects of the famous cabinet of mirrors—a wanton trap, worthy of a satyr become a millionaire, or Turcaret metamorphosed into Priapus.
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They swung stoutly in the great swing, attached to the two chestnut trees, celebrated by the Abbé de Bernis. While swinging the girls, one after the other, and making folds of flying crinoline that Greuze would have found worth his study, the Toulousian Tholomyès, who was something of a Spaniard—Toulouse is cousin to Tolosa—sang in a melancholy key, the old
gallega
song, probably inspired by some beautiful damsel swinging in the air between two trees.

Fantine alone refused to swing.

“I do not like that kind of affectation,” murmured Favourite, rather sharply.

They left the donkeys for a new pleasure, crossed the Seine in a boat, and walked from Passy to the Barrière de l‘Etoile. They had been on their feet, it will be remembered, since five in the morning, but
bah! there is no weariness on Sunday,
said Favourite; on Sunday fatigue has a holiday. Towards three o‘clock, the four couples, wild with happiness, were climbing down from the roller-coaster, a peculiar construction where sinuous contour you could see above the trees of the Champs-Elysées.

From time to time Favourite exclaimed:

“But the surprise? I want the surprise.”

“Be patient,” answered Tholomyès.

TABLE TALK and lovers’ talk equally elude the grasp; lovers’ talk is clouds, table talk is smoke.

Fameuil and Dahlia hummed airs; Tholomyès drank, Zéphine laughed, Fantine smiled. Listolier blew a wooden trumpet that he had bought at Saint Cloud. Favourite looked tenderly at Blacheville and said:

“Blacheville, I adore you.”

This brought forth a question from Blacheville:

“What would you do, Favourite, if I should leave you?”

“Me!” cried Favourite. “Oh! do not say that, even in sport! If you should leave me, I would run after you, I would scratch you, I would pull your hair, I would throw water on you, I would have you arrested.”

Blacheville smiled with the effeminate foppery of a man whose self-love is tickled. Favourite continued:

“Yes! I would call the police! I wouldn’t hold back! I would scream, for example: scoundrel!”

Blacheville, in ecstasy, leaned back in his chair, and closed both eyes with a satisfied air.

Dahlia, still eating, whispered to Favourite in the hubbub:

“Are you really so fond of your Blacheville, then?”

“I detest him,” whispered Favourite, taking up her fork. “He is stingy; I am in love with the little fellow over the way from where I live. He is a nice young man; do you know him? Anybody can see that he was born to be an actor! I love actors. As soon as he comes into the house, his mother cries out: ‘Oh, dear! my peace is all gone. There, he is going to hallo! You will split my head;’ just because he goes into the garret among the rats, into the dark corners, as high as he can go, and sings and declaims—something or other so loud that they can hear him below! He already makes twenty sous a day by copying documents for a lawyer. He is the son of an old chorister of Saint-Jacques du Haut-Pas! Oh, he is a nice young man! He is so fond of me that he said one day, when he saw me making dough for pancakes: ‘Mamselle, make your gloves into fritters and I will eat them.’ Nobody but artists can say things like these; I am on the high road to go crazy about this little fellow. It is all the same, I tell Blacheville that I adore him. How I lie! Oh, how I lie!”

Favourite paused, then continued:

“Dahlia, you see I am melancholy. It has done nothing but rain all summer ; the wind irritates me, it is always in a bad mood. Blacheville is very stingy; there are hardly any green peas in the market yet, people care for nothing but eating; I have the spleen, as the English say; butter is so dear! and then, just think of it—it is horrible! We are dining in a room with a bed in it. I am disgusted with life.”

AT THIS MOMENT, Favourite, crossing her arms and turning round her head, looked fixedly at Tholomyès and said:

“Come! the surprise?”

“Precisely. The moment has come,” replied Tholomyès. “Gentlemen, the hour has come for surprising these ladies. Ladies, wait for us a moment.”

“It begins with a kiss,” said Blacheville.

“On the forehead,” added Tholomyès.

Each one gravely placed a kiss on the forehead of his mistress; after which they directed their steps towards the door, all four in file, laying their fingers on their lips.

Favourite clapped her hands as they went out.

“It is amusing already,” said she.

“Do not be too long,” murmured Fantine. “We are waiting for you.”
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THE GIRLS, left alone, leaned their elbows on the window sills in couples, and chattered together, bending their heads and speaking from one window to the other.

They saw the young men go out of Bombarda‘s, arm in arm; they turned round, made signals to them laughingly, then disappeared in the dusty Sunday crowd which takes possession of the Champs-Elysées once a week.

“Do not be long!” cried Fantine.

“What are they going to bring us?” said Zéphine.

“Surely something pretty,” said Dahlia.

“I hope it will be gold,” resumed Favourite.

Some time passed in this manner. Suddenly Favourite started as if from sleep.

“Well!” said she, “and the surprise?”

“Yes,” returned Dahlia, “the famous surprise.”

“They are taking a very long time!” said Fantine.

As Fantine finished the sigh, the boy who had waited at dinner entered. He had in his hand something that looked like a letter.

“What is that?” asked Favourite.

“It is a paper that the gentlemen left for these ladies,” he replied.

“Why did you not bring it at once?”

“Because the gentlemen ordered me not to give it to the ladies before an hour,” returned the boy.

Favourite snatched the paper from his hands. It was really a letter.

“Stop!” said she. “There is no address; but see what is written on it:

She hastily unsealed the letter, opened it, and read (she knew how to read):

“P.S. The dinner is paid for.”