Les Miserables (Movie Tie-in) (9781101612774)

by Hugo, Victor; Donougher, Christine (TRN)

  Favourite, having been in England, was greatly admired by Zéphine and Dahlia. She had acquired a home of her own at a very early age. Her father, an elderly, coarse, and boastful teacher of mathematics, had never married but despite his years was still a womanizer. In his youth he had seen the skirts of a chambermaid caught up on a fender and the vison had caused him to fall in love. Favourite was the outcome. From time to time she saw her father, who nodded to her. One morning a wild-eyed elderly woman had entered her room saying, ‘You don’t know who I am? I’m your mother.’ The woman had helped herself to food and drink, fetched a mattress and moved in. She was bad-tempered and devout. She never spoke to Favourite, stayed silent for hours on end, ate enough for four, and went downstairs to unbosom herself to the concierge, complaining about her daughter.

  What had caused Dahlia to take up with Listolier, and perhaps with others, were her pretty pink fingernails. How could such nails be expected to do hard work? A girl wanting to remain virtuous must sacrifice her hands. As for Zéphine, she had won Fameuil’s heart by her provocative and caressing way of saying, ‘Oui, Monsieur’.

  The young men were comrades and the girls were friends. Love-affairs of that kind always go hand-in-hand with that kind of friendship.

  Virtue and philosophy are separate things, the proof of which is that, making due allowance for these irregular arrangements, Favourite, Zéphine, and Dahlia were philosophical, whereas Fan-tine was virtuous.

  Virtuous, you may ask – but what of Tholomyès? Solomon would reply that love is a part of virtue. We will merely say that Fantine’s was her first and only love, and she was wholly faithful. She was the only one of the four girls whom only one person addressed with the familiar tu.

  She was one of those beings hatched, as it were, in the bosom of the people. Sprung from the nethermost depths of society, she bore the stigma of anonymity and the unknown. She had been born at Montreuil-sur-mer, but nothing was known of her parents. She was called Fantine because she had never been called anything else. At the time of her birth the Directory had been in power. She could have no family name since she had no family, and no baptismal name since at that time there had been no Church. She was called by the name bestowed on her by some passer-by who had seen her running barefoot in the streets, and she accepted it as she accepted the raindrops when they fell. La Petite Fantine – and that was all anyone knew about her. At the age often she had left the town and gone into service with a farming family in the neighbourhood. At fifteen she had gone to Paris ‘to seek her fortune’. She was beautiful and had stayed pure as long as she could – a beautiful blonde with fine teeth. Gold and pearls were her dowry, but the gold was on her head and the pearls were in her mouth.

  She worked in order to live, and presently fell in love, also in order to live, for the heart, too, has its hunger. She fell in love with Tholomyès.

  For him it was a passing affair, for her the love of her life. The streets of the Latin quarter, swarming with students and grisettes, saw the beginning of the dream. In that maze on the hill of the Panthéon where so many knots have been tied and loosed, she fled for a long time to escape from Tholomyès, but always in such a fashion as to meet him again. There is a way of running which resembles pursuit. And so it happened.

  Tholomyès, being the liveliest, was the guiding spirit of the small group formed by Blachevelle, Listolier, Fameuil, and himself.

  He was an older student in the classic style. He was rich, with an income of four thousand francs, a matter of awestruck report on the Montagne Sainte-Geneviève. He was a thirty-year-old, ill-preserved rake, wrinkled and gap-toothed, with a bald patch of which he said unrepining, ‘Tonsured at thirty, on one’s knees at forty’. He had a poor digestion and a weakness in one eye; but his youth in its passing heightened his gaiety, replacing teeth with mockery, hair with lightheartedness, health with irony and adding a twinkle to the rheumy eye. He flourished in dilapidation; youth, retreating in good order, did so with laughter and high spirits. He had had a play refused by the Théâtre du Vaudeville, and now and then wrote indifferent verse. Moreover, he was superiorly sceptical of all things, which lent him great authority with lesser souls. In short, balding and ironical, he was the leader.

  One day Tholomyès took the other three aside and said with an oracular flourish:

  ‘For nearly a year Fantine, Dahlia, Zéphine, and Favourite have been asking us for a surprise and we have solemnly promised to give them one. They keep on about it, especially to me. Like the old women of Naples who exclaim to St Janvier, “Yellow Face, work your miracle!” they keep saying to me, “Tholomyès, when are you going to produce the surprise?” And in the meantime we have all had letters from our parents. We are harassed on both sides. I think the time has come. Let us now consider.’

  Tholomyès then lowered his voice and what he said was so mirth-provoking that it drew a great burst of laughter from all four and caused Blachevelle to exclaim: ‘That’s a stupendous idea!’

  The rest of the conference was lost in the smoke of an adjacent ale-house, but its outcome was a pleasure-party which took place on the following Sunday, the four young men and the four girls.

  III

  Four and four

  It is not easy for us in these days to imagine what a country outing of students and grisettes was like forty-five years ago. Paris no longer has the same outskirts, and what might be termed the face of circum-Parisian life has wholly changed. Instead of the post-chaise we have the railway-carriage, and instead of the sailing-cutter the steamboat. We now talk of Fécamp as once we talked of Saint Cloud. Paris in 1862 is a town with all France for its suburbs.

  The eight young people conscientiously indulged in all the rustic pastimes that were then available. It was the beginning of the holiday season, a warm, bright summer’s day. The day before, Favourite, the only one who could write, had sent Tholomyès the following note in the name of the four girls, ‘Early to rise for the great surprise!’ – and they had got up at five that morning. They went by coach to Saint-Cloud, inspected the dry cascade exclaiming, ‘How wonderful it must be when there’s any water! breakfasted at the Tête-Noire, had fun tossing quoits by the big pond, climbed up to the Lantern of Diogenes, bet macaroons on the gambling-wheel on the Pont de Sèvres, picked bunches of flowers at Puteaux, bought cream-puffs at Neuilly, ate apple-turnovers everywhere and were entirely happy.

  The girls laughed and twittered like uncaged birds, now and then administering reproving taps to their young men. It was the morning intoxication of life, the unforgettable years, the trembling of the dragonfly’s wing. Can you not remember it? Have you never walked through undergrowth thrusting the branches aside to protect the delightful head behind you, or slid down a damp slope with a girl clinging to your hand and protesting, ‘Heavens, my new boots!’ Let it be said that not even this trifling vexation troubled that happy company, although Favourite had said maternally when they set out, ‘There are slugs on the paths. It’s a sign of rain, my dears.’

  All four girls were so enchantingly pretty. An elderly poet, seeing them go by under the chestnut-trees of Saint-Cloud at six that morning, exclaimed, ‘There’s one too many!’ having in mind the three Graces. Favourite, the friend of Blachevelle and the eldest, being twenty-three, ran ahead under the branches, jumping ditches, skipping over bushes, leading the dance with the nimbleness of a dryad. Zéphine and Dahlia, whose looks were in some sort complementary, each enhancing the other, stayed close together, partly from coquetry and partly from friendship, and adopted English mannerisms. Melancholy was in vogue for women, as Byronism was later for men, and feminine hair was beginning to be only loosely curled. Zéphine and Dahlia wore theirs in tight rolls. Listolier and Fameuil, engaged in discussing their university professors, were describing to Fantine the dispute then in progress between M. Delvincourt and M. Blondeau, both of the Faculty of Law. Blachevelle was looking as though he had been expressly created for the purpose of carrying Favourite’s shawl on Sundays.
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  Tholomyès, following behind, was still in charge. He was merry, but his leadership made itself felt; there was authority in his good-humour. His most notable garment was a pair of baggy nankeen trousers – elephant-legs as they were called – with understraps of copper mesh. He was carrying a handsome rattan cane and, since his audacity was boundless, he had in his mouth a strange object called a cigar. Nothing being sacred to him, he had taken up smoking.

  “Tholomyès is extraordinary,’ the others said in awe. ‘Those trousers!’

  As for Fantine, she was happiness itself. Those beautiful white teeth had evidently been intended most especially for laughter. She carried in her hand, more often than she wore it on her head, a straw bonnet with long white ribbons, and her thick golden locks, which so easily broke loose and were always having to be pinned up, might have been those of Galatea fleeing under the willows. Her lips were parted in delight. The corners of her mouth, sensually upturned like an antique mask of Erigone, seemed to invite some bold advance, but long eyelashes cast their discreet downward shadow over this wantonness, as though to call it to order. Her clothing had a quality of song and flame. She was wearing a mauve dress of the gauzy material made in Barège, with bronze-leather bootees whose crossed laces disclosed white openwork stockings, and with a muslin bodice from Marseilles of which the name, canezou – a corruption of the words quinze août, as pronounced on the Canebière-denotes high summer and the warm south. The other three, less diffident, wore frankly low-necked dresses which, under their flowered hats, were both charming and provocative; but compared with this daring display, Fantine’s canezou with its transparencies, its indiscretion and reticence, at once concealing and revealing, was a piquant triumph of modesty, and it may well be that the famous Court of Love presided over by the Vicomtesse de Cette with her sea-green eyes would have awarded it the prize for coquetry despite its intended restraint. What is most innocent is sometimes most calculating. These things happen.

  Glowing of face and delicate in profile, eyes of deep blue with heavy lids, small, arched feet and admirably turned wrists and ankles, white skin with here and there an azure tracery of veins, firm, youthful cheeks, the sturdy, supple neck of an Aegean Juno and shoulders such as Coustou might have modelled with an enticing hollow between them visible through the gauze – such was Fantine, gaiety sobered by thoughtfulness, sculptural and exquisite, a statue to be guessed at beneath her draperies and a soul contained in the statue.

  She was beautiful without being too aware of it. Those rare observers, the worshippers of the beautiful who measure all things against perfection, would have discerned in this little working-girl, under her Parisian fripperies, a hint of antique harmony. The daughter of the shadows had breeding. She was graced with the two orders of beauty, style and rhythm. Style is the form of the ideal, rhythm is its movement.

  We have said of Fantine that she was happiness itself; but she was also modesty. What the close observer might have perceived beneath the intoxication of youth, summer, and a love-affair, was an unconquerable reserve. She was always a little taken aback, and it is this innocent dismay which distinguishes Psyche from Venus. Her long, slender fingers were those of a vestal stirring the ash beneath the sacred flame with a rod of gold. Although, alas, she would have refused Tholomyès nothing, her expression in repose was above all virginal; a sort of dignity, earnest and almost austere, would at moments take possession of it, and it was strongly disconcerting to see her gaiety thus eclipsed in an abrupt withdrawal. In those moments of swift and sometimes emphatic gravity she was like a disdainful goddess. Her forehead, nose, and chin presented that balance of line, very different from the balance of proportion, which constitutes the harmony of a face; and in the eloquent interval separating the base of her nose from her upper lip she had that charming and scarcely perceptible fold which is the mysterious token of chastity, and which caused Barbarossa to fall in love with a Diana found in the ruins of Iconium.

  Love, let us agree, may be a fault. Fantine’s was the innocence that rides above it.

  IV

  Tholomyès sings a Spanish song

  That day was flooded from beginning to end with sunshine. All Nature seemed on holiday. Scent rose up from the lawns of Saint-Cloud, leaves and branches fluttered in the river breeze, bees pillaged the clover, a riot of butterflies hovered over jasmine, milfoil, and wild oats, and the King of France’s noble park was occupied by a host of vagabonds, the birds.

  The four entranced couples were a part of all this magic, singing as they danced and ran, chasing butterflies, gathering wild flowers, wetting openwork stockings in the long grass, youthful, foolish, and kind, each exchanging a kiss now and then with any other, except Fantine, who was enclosed in her own shy dream and was in love. ‘You’ve always got a look about you,’ Favourite said.

  These are life’s delights. These momentary, happy pairings are a deep response to life and nature, a summons to warmth and light. There must once have been a good fairy who ordered the fields and trees expressly for young hearts, and thanks to her we have the eternal école buisonnière, that school for lovers under the sky which will endure as long as there are trees and novices. Hence the popularity of spring among thinkers. Nobleman and shop-boy, peer and peasant, the people of the Court and the people of the town, all are under the spell of that good fairy. They seek to find themselves in laughter, and there is a glow of discovery in the air, a miraculous transformation in the fact of loving. The lawyer’s clerk becomes a god. The cries and chasings in the grass, the clasped waist, the murmur of half-spoken words that are a song of rapture, the cherry passed from mouth to mouth, these like a flame rising and sinking are the heaven of life. Girls sweetly give themselves and believe that it will last for ever. Philosophers, poets, and painters contemplate these ecstasies and cannot encompass them, so dazzled are they. ‘The departure for Cythera’ cries Watteau. Lancret, the painter of the middle-class, sees his people soaring skyward; Diderot opens his arms to all light loves, and d’Urfé brings in the druids.

  After breakfasting, the four couples visited what was then called the King’s Enclosure to see a plant newly arrived from India, of which we have forgotten the name but which was drawing all Paris to Saint-Cloud. It was a strange and charming tall-stemmed shrub whose dense tangle of threadlike branches bore no leaves but innumerable small white blossoms, so that it resembled a head of hair dusted with flowers. There was always an admiring crowd round it.

  After this Tholomyès cried, ‘I propose a donkey-ride,’ and having bargained with a donkey-man they rode through Vanvres to Issy.

  At Issy an incident occurred. The park, now part of the bien national, which at that time was owned by the army-caterer Bourguin, happened to be open. They went in through the wrought-iron gates and, after inspecting the statue of the anchorite in his grotto, ventured upon the mysteries of the famous hall of mirrors whose wanton distortions were worthy of a satyr become millionaire or a Turcaret turned into Priapus. Then they came to the great swing, slung between the chestnut-trees, which has been celebrated by the Abbé de Bernis. The girls were swung in turn amid laughter provoked by a billowing of skirts that would have delighted Greuze and which moved Tholomyès, who came from Toulouse and was partly Spanish, to deliver himself dolefully of an old Spanish song a gallega, doubtless inspired by some similar occasion.

  Soy de Badajoz

  Amor me llamo.

  Toda mi alma

  Es en mi ojos

  Porque enseñas

  A tus piernas.*

  Only Fantine refused to let herself be swung.

  ‘I don’t like people to give themselves airs,’ Favourite remarked rather sharply.

  Having finished with the donkeys they took a boat along the Seine and walked from Passy up to the Barriére de l’Étoile. We may recall that they had been on their feet since five that morning, but there – ‘There’s no getting tired on a Sunday,’ said Favourite. ‘On Sundays tiredness doesn’t happen.’ At three o’clock they
were sliding down the switchback, a singular structure then standing on the high ground round the Rue Beaujon, of which the rugged outline showed above the tops of the trees on the Champs-Élysées.

  Now and then Favourite cried:

  ‘But the surprise? When do we get the great surprise?’

  ‘You must be patient,’ said Tholomyès.

  V

  Chez Bombarda

  Having exhausted the Russian Peaks and being by now a little weary, the thoughts of the party turned to dinner and they repaired to the Cabaret Bombarda, a branch establishment opened on the Champs-Élysées by the famous restaurateur, Bombarda, whose sign hung on the Rue de Rivoli at the corner of the Passage Delorme.

  A big, ugly room with an alcove containing a bed at one end (the place was so full on a Sunday that they had to put up with this); two windows from which the embankment and the river could be seen through the elms; the radiant glow of August beyond the windows; two tables, one piled high with bouquets and male and female hats, and the other, at which the four pairs were seated, loaded with plates and dishes, bottles and glasses, jugs of beer and carafes of wine – little order on the table and some disorder below it, whence proceeded, in Molière’s words, ‘a great clatter of feet’. Such was the scene at about half past four that afternoon, with the sun beginning to set and the appetites to diminish.

  The Champs-Élysées, filled with sunshine and people, was all glare and dust, those two constituents of glory. The Marly horses, neighing marble, reared in a golden haze. Carriages drove up and down. A squadron of the magnificent Gardes du Corps with a trumpeter at their head rode along the Avenue de Neuilly, and the white nag, touched with pink in the sunset, floated over the dome of the Tuileries. The Place de la Concorde, at that time re-named Place Louis XV, was thronged with strollers, many wearing the silver fleur-de-lis on a white ribbon, which in 1817 had still not disappeared from all buttonholes. Here and there clusters of little girls surrounded by applauding spectators sang the Bourbon ditty with its refrain, ‘Rendez-nous notre père de Gand, Rendez-nous notre père,’ which had electrified the Hundred Days.