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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 Thenardier, 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.
lt 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, Zephine 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 Tholomyes 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 Tholomyes, then a second, then a third.
Tholomyes 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 Tholomyes, 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. Felix Tholomyes.
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 Thenardier 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 Thenardier," 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 Thenardier 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 Thenardier 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 Thenardiers were playing with
the new-comer at making holes in the ground, which was an immense
pleasure.
The new-comer 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 Francoise
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 Thenardier; "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 Thenardier's hand, looked at her fixedly, and
said:--
"Will you keep my child for me?"
The Thenardier 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 Thenardier.
"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 Thenardier.
"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 Thenardier.
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 Thenardier.
"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 Thenardiers 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.
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