Les misyrables, p.259
Les Misérables, page 259
CHAPTER I--THE MALICIOUS PLAYFULNESS OF THE WIND
Since 1823, when the tavern of Montfermeil was on the way to shipwreckand was being gradually engulfed, not in the abyss of a bankruptcy, butin the cesspool of petty debts, the Thénardier pair had had two otherchildren; both males. That made five; two girls and three boys.
Madame Thénardier had got rid of the last two, while they were stillyoung and very small, with remarkable luck.
_Got rid of_ is the word. There was but a mere fragment of nature inthat woman. A phenomenon, by the way, of which there is more thanone example extant. Like the Maréchale de La Mothe-Houdancourt, theThénardier was a mother to her daughters only. There her maternityended. Her hatred of the human race began with her own sons. In thedirection of her sons her evil disposition was uncompromising, and herheart had a lugubrious wall in that quarter. As the reader has seen, shedetested the eldest; she cursed the other two. Why? Because. The mostterrible of motives, the most unanswerable of retorts--Because. "I haveno need of a litter of squalling brats," said this mother.
Let us explain how the Thénardiers had succeeded in getting rid of theirlast two children; and even in drawing profit from the operation.
The woman Magnon, who was mentioned a few pages further back, was thesame one who had succeeded in making old Gillenormand support the twochildren which she had had. She lived on the Quai des Célestins, at thecorner of this ancient street of the Petit-Musc which afforded her theopportunity of changing her evil repute into good odor. The reader willremember the great epidemic of croup which ravaged the river districtsof the Seine in Paris thirty-five years ago, and of which science tookadvantage to make experiments on a grand scale as to the efficacy ofinhalations of alum, so beneficially replaced at the present day by theexternal tincture of iodine. During this epidemic, the Magnon lost bothher boys, who were still very young, one in the morning, the otherin the evening of the same day. This was a blow. These children wereprecious to their mother; they represented eighty francs a month. Theseeighty francs were punctually paid in the name of M. Gillenormand, bycollector of his rents, M. Barge, a retired tip-staff, in the Rue duRoi-de-Sicile. The children dead, the income was at an end. The Magnonsought an expedient. In that dark free-masonry of evil of which sheformed a part, everything is known, all secrets are kept, and all lendmutual aid. Magnon needed two children; the Thénardiers had two.The same sex, the same age. A good arrangement for the one, a goodinvestment for the other. The little Thénardiers became little Magnons.Magnon quitted the Quai des Célestins and went to live in the RueClocheperce. In Paris, the identity which binds an individual to himselfis broken between one street and another.
The registry office being in no way warned, raised no objections, andthe substitution was effected in the most simple manner in the world.Only, the Thénardier exacted for this loan of her children, ten francs amonth, which Magnon promised to pay, and which she actually did pay.It is unnecessary to add that M. Gillenormand continued to performhis compact. He came to see the children every six months. He did notperceive the change. "Monsieur," Magnon said to him, "how much theyresemble you!"
Thénardier, to whom avatars were easy, seized this occasion to becomeJondrette. His two daughters and Gavroche had hardly had time todiscover that they had two little brothers. When a certain degreeof misery is reached, one is overpowered with a sort of spectralindifference, and one regards human beings as though they were spectres.Your nearest relations are often no more for you than vague shadowyforms, barely outlined against a nebulous background of life and easilyconfounded again with the invisible.
On the evening of the day when she had handed over her two littleones to Magnon, with express intention of renouncing them forever, theThénardier had felt, or had appeared to feel, a scruple. She said to herhusband: "But this is abandoning our children!" Thénardier, masterfuland phlegmatic, cauterized the scruple with this saying: "Jean JacquesRousseau did even better!" From scruples, the mother proceeded touneasiness: "But what if the police were to annoy us? Tell me, MonsieurThénardier, is what we have done permissible?" Thénardier replied:"Everything is permissible. No one will see anything but true blue init. Besides, no one has any interest in looking closely after childrenwho have not a sou."
Magnon was a sort of fashionable woman in the sphere of crime. She wascareful about her toilet. She shared her lodgings, which were furnishedin an affected and wretched style, with a clever gallicized Englishthief. This English woman, who had become a naturalized Parisienne,recommended by very wealthy relations, intimately connected with themedals in the Library and Mademoiselle Mar's diamonds, became celebratedlater on in judicial accounts. She was called _Mamselle Miss_.
The two little creatures who had fallen to Magnon had no reason tocomplain of their lot. Recommended by the eighty francs, they were wellcared for, as is everything from which profit is derived; they wereneither badly clothed, nor badly fed; they were treated almost like"little gentlemen,"--better by their false mother than by their realone. Magnon played the lady, and talked no thieves' slang in theirpresence.
Thus passed several years. Thénardier augured well from the fact. Oneday, he chanced to say to Magnon as she handed him his monthly stipendof ten francs: "The father must give them some education."
All at once, these two poor children, who had up to that time beenprotected tolerably well, even by their evil fate, were abruptly hurledinto life and forced to begin it for themselves.
A wholesale arrest of malefactors, like that in the Jondrette garret,necessarily complicated by investigations and subsequent incarcerations,is a veritable disaster for that hideous and occult counter-societywhich pursues its existence beneath public society; an adventure of thisdescription entails all sorts of catastrophes in that sombre world. TheThénardier catastrophe involved the catastrophe of Magnon.
One day, a short time after Magnon had handed to Éponine the noterelating to the Rue Plumet, a sudden raid was made by the police in theRue Clocheperce; Magnon was seized, as was also Mamselle Miss; and allthe inhabitants of the house, which was of a suspicious character, weregathered into the net. While this was going on, the two little boys wereplaying in the back yard, and saw nothing of the raid. When they triedto enter the house again, they found the door fastened and the houseempty. A cobbler opposite called them to him, and delivered to them apaper which "their mother" had left for them. On this paper there wasan address: _M. Barge, collector of rents, Rue du Roi-de-Sicile, No_.8. The proprietor of the stall said to them: "You cannot live here anylonger. Go there. It is near by. The first street on the left. Ask yourway from this paper."
The children set out, the elder leading the younger, and holding in hishand the paper which was to guide them. It was cold, and his benumbedlittle fingers could not close very firmly, and they did not keep a verygood hold on the paper. At the corner of the Rue Clocheperce, a gust ofwind tore it from him, and as night was falling, the child was not ableto find it again.
They began to wander aimlessly through the streets.
