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A DOUBLE QUARTETTE
These Parisians came, one from Toulouse, another from Limoges,
the third from Cahors, and the fourth from Montauban; but they
were students; and when one says student, one says Parisian:to
study in Paris is to be born in Paris.
These young men were insignificant; every one has seen such
faces; four specimens of humanity taken at random; neither good
nor bad, neither wise nor ignorant, neither geniuses nor fools;
handsome, with that charming April which is called twenty years.
They were four Oscars; for, at that epoch, Arthurs did not
yet exist.Burn for him the perfumes of Araby! exclaimed romance.Oscar
advances.
Oscar, I shall behold him!
People had just emerged from Ossian; elegance was Scandinavian
and Caledonian; the pure English style was only to prevail later,
and the first of the Arthurs, Wellington, had but just won the
battle of Waterloo.
These Oscars bore the names, one of Felix Tholomyes, of Toulouse;
the second, Listolier, of Cahors; the next, Fameuil, of Limoges;
the last, Blachevelle, of Montauban.
Naturally, each of them had his mistress.
Blachevelle loved Favourite, so named because she had been
in England; Listolier adored Dahlia, who had taken for her nickname
the name of a flower; Fameuil idolized Zephine, an abridgment
of Josephine; Tholomyes had Fantine, called the Blonde, because
of her beautiful, sunny hair.
Favourite, Dahlia, Zephine, and Fantine were four ravishing
young women, perfumed and radiant, still a little like working-women,
and not yet entirely divorced from their needles; somewhat disturbed
by intrigues, but still retaining on their faces something of
the serenity of toil, and in their souls that flower of honesty
which survives the first fall in woman.
One of the four was called the young, because she was the youngest
of them, and one was called the old; the old one was twenty-three.
Not to conceal anything, the three first were more experienced,
more heedless, and more emancipated into the tumult of life than
Fantine the Blonde, who was still in her first illusions.
Dahlia, Zephine, and especially Favourite, could not have said
as much.There had already been more than one episode in their
romance, though hardly begun; and the lover who had borne the
name of Adolph in the first chapter had turned out to be Alphonse
in the second, and Gustave in the third.
Poverty and coquetry are two fatal counsellors; one scolds
and the other flatters, and the beautiful daughters of the people
have both of them whispering in their ear, each on its own side.
These badly guarded souls listen.
Hence the falls which they accomplish, and the stones which
are thrown at them.They are overwhelmed with splendor of all that
is immaculate and inaccessible.
Alas! what if the Jungfrau were hungry?
Favourite having been in England, was admired by Dahlia and
Zephine.She had had an establishment of her own very early in
life.Her father was an old unmarried professor of mathematics,
a brutal man and a braggart, who went out to give lessons in spite
of his age.This professor, when he was a young man, had one day
seen a chambermaid's gown catch on a fender; he had fallen in
love in consequence of this accident.
The result had been Favourite.
She met her father from time to time, and he bowed to her.
One morning an old woman with the air of a devotee, had entered
her apartments, and had said to her, "You do not know me,
Mamemoiselle?"
"No." "I am your mother."Then the old woman
opened the sideboard, and ate and drank, had a mattress which
she owned brought in, and installed herself.This cross and pious
old mother never spoke to Favourite, remained hours without uttering
a word, breakfasted, dined, and supped for four, and went down
to the porter's quarters for company, where she spoke ill of her
daughter.
It was having rosy nails that were too pretty which had drawn
Dahlia to Listolier, to others perhaps, to idleness.
How could she make such nails work?
She who wishes to remain virtuous must not have pity on her
hands.
As for Zephine, she had conquered Fameuil by her roguish and
caressing little way of saying "Yes, sir."
The young men were comrades; the young girls were friends.Such
loves are always accompanied by such friendships.
Goodness and philosophy are two distinct things; the proof
of this is that, after making all due allowances for these little
irregular households, Favourite, Zephine, and Dahlia were philosophical
young women, while Fantine was a good girl.
Good! some one will exclaim; and Tholomyes?
Solomon would reply that love forms a part of wisdom.
We will confine ourselves to saying that the love of Fantine
was a first love, a sole love, a faithful love.
She alone, of all the four, was not called "thou"
by a single one of them.
Fantine was one of those beings who blossom, so to speak, from
the dregs of the people.
Though she had emerged from the most unfathomable depths of
social shadow, she bore on her brow the sign of the anonymous
and the unknown.
She was born at M. sur M. Of what parents?
Who can say?
She had never known father or mother.She was called Fantine.
Why Fantine?
She had never borne any other name.
At the epoch of her birth the Directory still existed.She had
no family name; she had no family; no baptismal name; the Church
no longer existed.
She bore the name which pleased the first random passer-by,
who had encountered her, when a very small child, running bare-legged
in the street.
She received the name as she received the water from the clouds
upon her brow when it rained.She was called little Fantine.
No one knew more than that.
This human creature had entered life in just this way.
At the age of ten, Fantine quitted the town and went to service
with some farmers in the neighborhood.
At fifteen she came to Paris "to seek her fortune."Fantine
was beautiful, and remained pure as long as she could.She was
a lovely blonde, with fine teeth.
She had gold and pearls for her dowry; but her gold was on
her head, and her pearls were in her mouth.
She worked for her living; then, still for the sake of her
living,-- for the heart, also, has its hunger,--she loved.
She loved Tholomyes.
An amour for him; passion for her.
The streets of the Latin quarter, filled with throngs of students
and grisettes, saw the beginning of their dream.
Fantine had long evaded Tholomyes in the mazes of the hill
of the Pantheon, where so many adventurers twine and untwine,
but in such a way as constantly to encounter him again.There is
a way of avoiding which resembles seeking.
In short, the eclogue took place.
Blachevelle, Listolier, and Fameuil formed a sort of group
of which Tholomyes was the head.
It was he who possessed the wit.
Tholomyes was the antique old student; he was rich; he had
an income of four thousand francs; four thousand francs! a splendid
scandal on Mount Sainte-Genevieve. Tholomyes was a fast man of
thirty, and badly preserved.
He was wrinkled and toothless, and he had the beginning of
a bald spot, of which he himself said with sadness, the skull
at thirty, the knee at forty.
His digestion was mediocre, and he had been attacked by a watering
in one eye.
But in proportion as his youth disappeared, gayety was kindled;
he replaced his teeth with buffooneries, his hair with mirth,
his health with irony, his weeping eye laughed incessantly.
He was dilapidated but still in flower.His youth, which was
packing up for departure long before its time, beat a retreat
in good order, bursting with laughter, and no one saw anything
but fire.
He had had a piece rejected at the Vaudeville.He made a few
verses now and then.
In addition to this he doubted everything to the last degree,
which is a vast force in the eyes of the weak.
Being thus ironical and bald, he was the leader.Iron is an
English word.
Is it possible that irony is derived from it?
One day Tholomyes took the three others aside, with the gesture
of an oracle, and said to them:--
"Fantine, Dahlia, Zephine, and Favourite have been teasing
us for nearly a year to give them a surprise.
We have promised them solemnly that we would.
They are forever talking about it to us, to me in particular,
just as the old women in Naples cry to Saint Januarius, `Faccia
gialluta, fa o miracolo, Yellow face, perform thy miracle,' so
our beauties say to me incessantly, `Tholomyes, when will you
bring forth your surprise?'
At the same time our parents keep writing to us.Pressure on
both sides.
The moment has arrived, it seems to me; let us discuss the
question."
Thereupon, Tholomyes lowered his voice and articulated something
so mirthful, that a vast and enthusiastic grin broke out upon
the four mouths simultaneously, and Blachevelle exclaimed, "That
is an idea."
A smoky tap-room presented itself; they entered, and the remainder
of their confidential colloquy was lost in shadow.
The result of these shades was a dazzling pleasure party which
took place on the following Sunday, the four young men inviting
the four young girls.
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