Les Miserables (abridged) (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) (23 page)

“How old is she?”

“She is going on three years.”

“The age of my oldest.”

The three girls were grouped in an attitude of deep anxiety and bliss; a great event had occurred; a large worm had come out of the ground; they were afraid of it, and yet in ecstasies over it.

Their bright foreheads touched each other: three heads in one halo of glory.

“Children,” exclaimed the Thénardier mother; “how soon they know one another. See them! one would swear they were three sisters.”

These words were the spark which the other mother was probably awaiting. She seized the hand of Madame Thénardier and said:

“Will you keep my child for me?”

Madame Thénardier made a motion of surprise, which was neither consent nor refusal.

Cosette’s mother continued:

“You see I cannot take my child into the country. Work forbids it. With a child I could not find a place there; they are so absurd in that district. It is God who has led me before your inn. The sight of your little ones, so pretty, and clean, and happy, has overwhelmed me. I said: there is a good mother; they will be like three sisters, and then it will not be long before I come back. Will you keep my child for me?”

“I must think over it,” said Thénardier.

“I will give six francs a month.”

Here a man’s voice was heard from within:

“Not less than seven francs, and six months paid in advance.”

“Six times seven are forty-two,” said Thénardier.

“I will give it,” said the mother.

“And fifteen francs extra for the first expenses,” added the man.

“That’s fifty-seven francs,” said Madame Thénardier, and in the midst of her reckoning she sang indistinctly:

“I will give it,” said the mother; “I have eighty francs. That will leave me enough to go into the country if I walk. I will earn some money there, and as soon as I have I will come for my little love.”

The man’s voice returned:

“Has the child a wardrobe?”

“That is my husband,” said Thénardier.

“Certainly she has, the poor darling. I knew it was your husband. And a fine wardrobe it is too, an extravagant wardrobe, everything in dozens, and silk dresses like a lady. They are there in my carpet-bag.”

“You must leave that here,” put in the man’s voice.

“Of course I shall give it to you,” said the mother; “it would be strange if I should leave my child naked.”

The face of the master appeared.

“It is all right,” said he.

The bargain was concluded. The mother passed the night at the inn, gave her money and left her child, fastened again her carpet-bag, diminished by her child’s wardrobe, and very light now, and set off next morning, expecting soon to return. These partings are arranged tranquilly, but they are full of despair.

A neighbour of the Thénardiers met this mother on her way, and came in, saying:

“I have just met a woman in the street, who was crying as if her heart would break.”

When Cosette’s mother had gone, the man said to his wife:

“That will do me for my note of 110 francs which falls due tomorrow; I was fifty francs short. Do you realize I would have received a summons? You have proved a good mousetrap with your little ones.”

“Without knowing it,” said the woman.

THE CAPTURED MOUSE was a very puny one, but the cat exulted even over a lean mouse.

What were the Thénardiers?

We will say but a word just here; by-and-by the sketch shall be completed.

They belonged to that bastard class formed of low people who have risen, and intelligent people who have fallen, which lies between the classes called middle and lower, and which unites some of the faults of the latter with nearly all the vices of the former, without possessing the generous impulses of the workman, or the respectability of the bourgeois.

They were of those dwarfish natures, which, if perchance heated by some sullen fire, easily become monstrous. The woman was at heart a brute; the man a blackguard: both in the highest degree capable of that hideous species of progress which can be made towards evil. There are souls which, crablike, crawl continually towards darkness, going back in life rather than advancing in it; using what experience they have to increase their deformity ; growing worse without ceasing, and becoming steeped more and more thoroughly in an intensifying wickedness. Such souls were this man and this woman.

The man especially would have been a puzzle to a physiognomist. We have only to look at some men to distrust them, for we feel the darkness of their souls in two ways. They are uneasy as to what is behind them, and threatening as to what is before them. They are full of mystery. We can no more answer for what they have done, than for what they will do. The shadow in their looks denounces them. If we hear them utter a word, or see them make a gesture, we catch glimpses of guilty secrets in their past, and dark mysteries in their future.

This Thénardier, if we may believe him, had been a soldier, a sergeant he said; he probably had made the campaign of 1815, and had even borne himself bravely according to all that appeared. We shall see hereafter in what his bravery consisted. The sign of his inn was an allusion to one of his feats of arms. He had painted it himself, for he knew how to do a little of everything—badly.

TO BE WICKED does not insure prosperity—for the inn did not turn a profit.

Thanks to Fantine’s fifty-seven francs, Thénardier had been able to avoid a protest and to honour his signature. The next month they were still in need of money, and the woman carried Cosette’s wardrobe to Paris and pawned it for sixty francs. When this sum was spent, the Thénardiers began to look upon the little girl as a child which they sheltered for charity, and treated her as such. Her clothes being gone, they dressed her in the cast-off garments of the little Thénardiers, that is in rags. They fed her on the leftovers, a little better than the dog, and a little worse than the cat. The dog and cat were her messmates. Cosette ate with them under the table in a wooden dish like theirs.

Her mother, as we shall see hereafter, who had found employment at M—sur M—, wrote, or rather had some one write for her every month, inquiring news of her child. The Thénardiers replied invariably:

“Cosette is doing wonderfully well.”

The six months passed away: the mother sent seven francs for the seventh month, and continued to send this sum regularly month after month. The year was not ended before Thénardier said: “A pretty price that is. What does she expect us to do for her seven francs?” And he wrote demanding twelve francs. The mother, whom he persuaded that her child was happy and doing well, assented, and forwarded the twelve francs.

There are certain natures which cannot have love on one side without hatred on the other. This Thénardier mother passionately loved her own little ones: this made her detest the young stranger. It is sad to think that a mother’s love can have such a dark side. Little as was the place Cosette occupied in the house, it seemed to her that this little was taken from her children, and that the little one lessened the air hers breathed. This woman, like many women of her kind, had a certain amount of caresses, and blows, and hard words to dispense each day. If she had not had Cosette, it is certain that her daughters, idolised as they were, would have received all, but the little stranger did them the service to attract the blows to herself; her children had only the caresses. Cosette could not stir that she did not draw down upon herself a hailstorm of undeserved and severe chastisements. A weak, soft little one who knew nothing of this world, or of God, continually ill-treated, scolded, punished, beaten, she saw beside her two other young things like herself, who lived in a halo of glory!

The woman was unkind to Cosette, Eponine and Azelma were unkind also. Children at that age are only copies of the mother; the size is reduced, that is all.

A year passed and then another.

People used to say in the village:

“What good people these Thénardiers are! They are not rich, and yet they bring up a poor child, that has been left with them.”

They thought Cosette was forgotten by her mother.

Meantime Thénardier, having learned in some obscure way that the child was probably illegitimate, and that its mother could not acknowledge it, demanded fifteen francs a month, saying “that the ‘creature’ was growing and eating,” and threatening to send her away. “She won’t humbug me,” he exclaimed. “I will confound her with the brat in the midst of her concealment. I must have more money.” The mother paid the fifteen francs.

From year to year the child grew, and her misery also.

So long as Cosette was very small, she was the scapegoat of the two other children; as soon as she began to grow a little, that is to say, before she was five years old, she became the servant of the house.

Five years old, it will be said, that is improbable. Alas! it is true, social suffering begins at all ages. Have we not seen lately the trial of Dumollard, an orphan become a bandit, who, from the age of five, say the homicidal documents, being alone in the world, “worked for his living and stole!”

Cosette was made to run errands, sweep the rooms, the yard, the street, wash the dishes, and even carry burdens. The Thénardiers felt doubly authorised to treat her thus, as the mother, who still remained at M—sur M—, began to be remiss in her payments. Some months remained due.

Had this mother returned to Montfermeil, at the end of these three years, she would not have known her child, Cosette, so fresh and pretty when she came to that house, was now thin and wan. She had a peculiar restless air. Sly! said the Thénardiers.

Injustice had made her sullen, and misery had made her ugly. Her fine eyes only remained to her, and they were painful to look at, for, large as they were, they seemed to increase the sadness.

It was a harrowing sight to see in the winter time the poor child, not yet six years old, shivering under the tatters of what was once a calico dress, sweeping the street before daylight with an enormous broom in her little red hands and tears in her large eyes.

In the place she was called the Lark. People like figurative names and were pleased thus to name this little being, not larger than a bird, trembling, frightened, and shivering, awake every morning first of all in the house and the village, always in the street or in the fields before dawn.

Only the poor Lark never sang.

BUT THIS MOTHER, in the meanwhile, who, according to the people of Montfermeil, seemed to have abandoned her child? What had become of her? Where was she? What was she doing?

After leaving her little Cosette with the Thénardiers, she went on her way and reached M—sur M—.

This, it will be remembered, was in 1818.

Fantine had left the province some twelve years before, and M—sur M—had changed in appearance. While Fantine had been slowly sinking deeper and deeper into misery, her native village had become prosperous.

About two years ago there had been accomplished there one of those industrial changes which are the great events of small communities.

This circumstance is important and we think it well to relate it, we might even say to italicise it.

From time immemorial the special occupation of the inhabitants of M—sur M—had been the imitation of English jets and German black glass trinkets. The business had always been sluggish because of the high price of the raw material, which reacted upon the manufacture. At the time of Fantine’s return to M—sur M—an unheard-of transformation had been effected in the production of these ‘black goods.’ Towards the end of the year 1815, an unknown man had established himself in the city, and had conceived the idea of substituting gum-lac for resin in the manufacture; and for bracelets, in particular, he made the clasps by simply bending the ends of the metal together instead of soldering them.

This very slight change had in fact reduced the price of the raw material enormously, and this had rendered it possible, first, to raise the wages of the labourer—a benefit to the region—secondly, to improve the quality of the goods—an advantage for the consumer—and thirdly, to sell them at a lower price even while making three times the profit—a gain for the manufacturer.

Thus we have three results from one idea.

In less than three years the inventor of this process had become rich, which was well, and had made all around him rich, which was better. He was a stranger in the Department. Nothing was known of his birth, and but little of his early history: he had come to the city with very little money, a few hundred francs at most.

From this slender capital, under the inspiration of an ingenious idea, made fruitful by order and care, he had drawn a fortune for himself, and a fortune for the whole region.

On his arrival at M—sur M—he had the dress, the manners, and the language of a mere labourer.

It seems that the very day on which he thus obscurely entered the little city of M—sur M—, just at dusk on a December evening, with his bundle on his back, and a thorn stick in his hand, a great fire had broken out in the Town Hall. This man rushed into the fire and saved, at the peril of his life, two children, who proved to be those of the captain of the gen darmerie, so no one thought to ask him for his passport. He was known from that time by the name of Old Madeleine.

HE WAS A MAN of about fifty, who always appeared to be pre-occupied in mind, and who was good-natured; this was all that could be said about him.