Les Misérables
“Enter my wine-shop.”
Nothing of all this is in existence now. The Mondétour labyrinth was
disembowelled and widely opened in 1847, and probably no longer exists
at the present moment. The Rue de la Chanvrerie and Corinthe have
disappeared beneath the pavement of the Rue Rambuteau.
As we have already said, Corinthe was the meeting-place if not the
rallying-point, of Courfeyrac and his friends. It was Grantaire who had
discovered Corinthe. He had entered it on account of the _Carpe horas_,
and had returned thither on account of the _Carpes au gras_. There they
drank, there they ate, there they shouted; they did not pay much, they
paid badly, they did not pay at all, but they were always welcome.
Father Hucheloup was a jovial host.
Hucheloup, that amiable man, as was just said, was a wine-shop-keeper
with a moustache; an amusing variety. He always had an ill-tempered
air, seemed to wish to intimidate his customers, grumbled at the people
who entered his establishment, and had rather the mien of seeking a
quarrel with them than of serving them with soup. And yet, we insist
upon the word, people were always welcome there. This oddity had
attracted customers to his shop, and brought him young men, who said to
each other: “Come hear Father Hucheloup growl.” He had been a
fencing-master. All of a sudden, he would burst out laughing. A big
voice, a good fellow. He had a comic foundation under a tragic
exterior, he asked nothing better than to frighten you, very much like
those snuff-boxes which are in the shape of a pistol. The detonation
makes one sneeze.
Mother Hucheloup, his wife, was a bearded and a very homely creature.
About 1830, Father Hucheloup died. With him disappeared the secret of
stuffed carps. His inconsolable widow continued to keep the wine-shop.
But the cooking deteriorated, and became execrable; the wine, which had
always been bad, became fearfully bad. Nevertheless, Courfeyrac and his
friends continued to go to Corinthe,—out of pity, as Bossuet said.
The Widow Hucheloup was breathless and misshapen and given to rustic
recollections. She deprived them of their flatness by her
pronunciation. She had a way of her own of saying things, which spiced
her reminiscences of the village and of her springtime. It had formerly
been her delight, so she affirmed, to hear the _loups-de-gorge_
(_rouges-gorges_) _chanter dans les ogrepines_ (_aubépines_)—to hear
the redbreasts sing in the hawthorn-trees.
The hall on the first floor, where “the restaurant” was situated, was a
large and long apartment encumbered with stools, chairs, benches, and
tables, and with a crippled, lame, old billiard-table. It was reached
by a spiral staircase which terminated in the corner of the room at a
square hole like the hatchway of a ship.
This room, lighted by a single narrow window, and by a lamp that was
always burning, had the air of a garret. All the four-footed furniture
comported itself as though it had but three legs—the whitewashed walls
had for their only ornament the following quatrain in honor of Mame
Hucheloup:—
Elle étonne à dix pas, elle épouvente à deux,
Une verrue habite en son nez hasardeux;
On tremble à chaque instant qu’elle ne vous la mouche
Et qu’un beau jour son nez ne tombe dans sa bouche.48
This was scrawled in charcoal on the wall.
Mame Hucheloup, a good likeness, went and came from morning till night
before this quatrain with the most perfect tranquillity. Two
serving-maids, named Matelote and Gibelotte,49 and who had never been
known by any other names, helped Mame Hucheloup to set on the tables
the jugs of poor wine, and the various broths which were served to the
hungry patrons in earthenware bowls. Matelote, large, plump, redhaired,
and noisy, the favorite ex-sultana of the defunct Hucheloup, was
homelier than any mythological monster, be it what it may; still, as it
becomes the servant to always keep in the rear of the mistress, she was
less homely than Mame Hucheloup. Gibelotte, tall, delicate, white with
a lymphatic pallor, with circles round her eyes, and drooping lids,
always languid and weary, afflicted with what may be called chronic
lassitude, the first up in the house and the last in bed, waited on
every one, even the other maid, silently and gently, smiling through
her fatigue with a vague and sleepy smile.
Before entering the restaurant room, the visitor read on the door the
following line written there in chalk by Courfeyrac:—
Régale si tu peux et mange si tu l’oses.50
CHAPTER II—PRELIMINARY GAYETIES
Laigle de Meaux, as the reader knows, lived more with Joly than
elsewhere. He had a lodging, as a bird has one on a branch. The two
friends lived together, ate together, slept together. They had
everything in common, even Musichetta, to some extent. They were, what
the subordinate monks who accompany monks are called, _bini_. On the
morning of the 5th of June, they went to Corinthe to breakfast. Joly,
who was all stuffed up, had a catarrh which Laigle was beginning to
share. Laigle’s coat was threadbare, but Joly was well dressed.
It was about nine o’clock in the morning, when they opened the door of
Corinthe.
They ascended to the first floor.
Matelote and Gibelotte received them.
“Oysters, cheese, and ham,” said Laigle.
And they seated themselves at a table.
The wine-shop was empty; there was no one there but themselves.
Gibelotte, knowing Joly and Laigle, set a bottle of wine on the table.
While they were busy with their first oysters, a head appeared at the
hatchway of the staircase, and a voice said:—
“I am passing by. I smell from the street a delicious odor of Brie
cheese. I enter.” It was Grantaire.
Grantaire took a stool and drew up to the table.
At the sight of Grantaire, Gibelotte placed two bottles of wine on the
table.
That made three.
“Are you going to drink those two bottles?” Laigle inquired of
Grantaire.
Grantaire replied:—
“All are ingenious, thou alone art ingenuous. Two bottles never yet
astonished a man.”
The others had begun by eating, Grantaire began by drinking. Half a
bottle was rapidly gulped down.
“So you have a hole in your stomach?” began Laigle again.
“You have one in your elbow,” said Grantaire.
And after having emptied his glass, he added:—
“Ah, by the way, Laigle of the funeral oration, your coat is old.”
“I should hope so,” retorted Laigle. “That’s why we get on well
together, my coat and I. It has acquired all my folds, it does not bind
me anywhere, it is moulded on my deformities, it falls in with all my
movements, I am only conscious of it because it keeps me warm. Old
coats are just like old friends.”
“That’s true,” ejaculated Joly, striking into the dialogue, “an old
goat is an old abi” (_ami_, friend).
“Especially in the mouth of a man whose head is stuffed up,” said
Grantaire.
“Grantaire,” demanded Laigle, “have you just come from the boulevard?”
“No.”
“We have just seen the head of the procession pass, Joly and I.”
“It’s a marvellous sight,” said Joly.
“How quiet this street is!” exclaimed Laigle. “Who would suspect that
Paris was turned upside down? How plainly it is to be seen that in
former days there were nothing but convents here! In this neighborhood!
Du Breul and Sauval give a list of them, and so does the Abbé Lebeuf.
They were all round here, they fairly swarmed, booted and barefooted,
shaven, bearded, gray, black, white, Franciscans, Minims, Capuchins,
Carmelites, Little Augustines, Great Augustines, old Augustines—there
was no end of them.”
“Don’t let’s talk of monks,” interrupted Grantaire, “it makes one want
to scratch one’s self.”
Then he exclaimed:—
“Bouh! I’ve just swallowed a bad oyster. Now hypochondria is taking
possession of me again. The oysters are spoiled, the servants are ugly.
I hate the human race. I just passed through the Rue Richelieu, in
front of the big public library. That pile of oyster-shells which is
called a library is disgusting even to think of. What paper! What ink!
What scrawling! And all that has been written! What rascal was it who
said that man was a featherless biped?51 And then, I met a pretty girl
of my acquaintance, who is as beautiful as the spring, worthy to be
called Floréal, and who is delighted, enraptured, as happy as the
angels, because a wretch yesterday, a frightful banker all spotted with
small-pox, deigned to take a fancy to her! Alas! woman keeps on the
watch for a protector as much as for a lover; cats chase mice as well
as birds. Two months ago that young woman was virtuous in an attic, she
adjusted little brass rings in the eyelet-holes of corsets, what do you
call it? She sewed, she had a camp bed, she dwelt beside a pot of
flowers, she was contented. Now here she is a bankeress. This
transformation took place last night. I met the victim this morning in
high spirits. The hideous point about it is, that the jade is as pretty
to-day as she was yesterday. Her financier did not show in her face.
Roses have this advantage or disadvantage over women, that the traces
left upon them by caterpillars are visible. Ah! there is no morality on
earth. I call to witness the myrtle, the symbol of love, the laurel,
the symbol of air, the olive, that ninny, the symbol of peace, the
apple-tree which came nearest rangling Adam with its pips, and the
fig-tree, the grandfather of petticoats. As for right, do you know what
right is? The Gauls covet Clusium, Rome protects Clusium, and demands
what wrong Clusium has done to them. Brennus answers: ‘The wrong that
Alba did to you, the wrong that Fidenæ did to you, the wrong that the
Eques, the Volsci, and the Sabines have done to you. They were your
neighbors. The Clusians are ours. We understand neighborliness just as
you do. You have stolen Alba, we shall take Clusium.’ Rome said: ‘You
shall not take Clusium.’ Brennus took Rome. Then he cried: ‘Væ victis!’
That is what right is. Ah! what beasts of prey there are in this world!
What eagles! It makes my flesh creep.”
He held out his glass to Joly, who filled it, then he drank and went
on, having hardly been interrupted by this glass of wine, of which no
one, not even himself, had taken any notice:—
“Brennus, who takes Rome, is an eagle; the banker who takes the
grisette is an eagle. There is no more modesty in the one case than in
the other. So we believe in nothing. There is but one reality: drink.
Whatever your opinion may be in favor of the lean cock, like the Canton
of Uri, or in favor of the fat cock, like the Canton of Glaris, it
matters little, drink. You talk to me of the boulevard, of that
procession, _et cætera, et cætera_. Come now, is there going to be
another revolution? This poverty of means on the part of the good God
astounds me. He has to keep greasing the groove of events every moment.
There is a hitch, it won’t work. Quick, a revolution! The good God has
his hands perpetually black with that cart-grease. If I were in his
place, I’d be perfectly simple about it, I would not wind up my
mechanism every minute, I’d lead the human race in a straightforward
way, I’d weave matters mesh by mesh, without breaking the thread, I
would have no provisional arrangements, I would have no extraordinary
repertory. What the rest of you call progress advances by means of two
motors, men and events. But, sad to say, from time to time, the
exceptional becomes necessary. The ordinary troupe suffices neither for
event nor for men: among men geniuses are required, among events
revolutions. Great accidents are the law; the order of things cannot do
without them; and, judging from the apparition of comets, one would be
tempted to think that Heaven itself finds actors needed for its
performance. At the moment when one expects it the least, God placards