Les Misérables
results; in the very characteristic interval which separates the base
of the nose from the upper lip, she had that imperceptible and charming
fold, a mysterious sign of chastity, which makes Barberousse fall in
love with a Diana found in the treasures of Iconia.
Love is a fault; so be it. Fantine was innocence floating high over
fault.
CHAPTER IV—THOLOMYÈS IS SO MERRY THAT HE SINGS A SPANISH DITTY
That day was composed of dawn, from one end to the other. All nature
seemed to be having a holiday, and to be laughing. The flower-beds of
Saint-Cloud perfumed the air; the breath of the Seine rustled the
leaves vaguely; the branches gesticulated in the wind, bees pillaged
the jasmines; a whole bohemia of butterflies swooped down upon the
yarrow, the clover, and the sterile oats; in the august park of the
King of France there was a pack of vagabonds, the birds.
The four merry couples, mingled with the sun, the fields, the flowers,
the trees, were resplendent.
And in this community of Paradise, talking, singing, running, dancing,
chasing butterflies, plucking convolvulus, wetting their pink,
open-work stockings in the tall grass, fresh, wild, without malice, all
received, to some extent, the kisses of all, with the exception of
Fantine, who was hedged about with that vague resistance of hers
composed of dreaminess and wildness, and who was in love. “You always
have a queer look about you,” said Favourite to her.
Such things are joys. These passages of happy couples are a profound
appeal to life and nature, and make a caress and light spring forth
from everything. There was once a fairy who created the fields and
forests expressly for those in love,—in that eternal hedge-school of
lovers, which is forever beginning anew, and which will last as long as
there are hedges and scholars. Hence the popularity of spring among
thinkers. The patrician and the knife-grinder, the duke and the peer,
the limb of the law, the courtiers and townspeople, as they used to say
in olden times, all are subjects of this fairy. They laugh and hunt,
and there is in the air the brilliance of an apotheosis—what a
transfiguration effected by love! Notaries’ clerks are gods. And the
little cries, the pursuits through the grass, the waists embraced on
the fly, those jargons which are melodies, those adorations which burst
forth in the manner of pronouncing a syllable, those cherries torn from
one mouth by another,—all this blazes forth and takes its place among
the celestial glories. Beautiful women waste themselves sweetly. They
think that this will never come to an end. Philosophers, poets,
painters, observe these ecstasies and know not what to make of it, so
greatly are they dazzled by it. The departure for Cythera! exclaims
Watteau; Lancret, the painter of plebeians, contemplates his bourgeois,
who have flitted away into the azure sky; Diderot stretches out his
arms to all these love idyls, and d’Urfé mingles druids with them.
After breakfast the four couples went to what was then called the
King’s Square to see a newly arrived plant from India, whose name
escapes our memory at this moment, and which, at that epoch, was
attracting all Paris to Saint-Cloud. It was an odd and charming shrub
with a long stem, whose numerous branches, bristling and leafless and
as fine as threads, were covered with a million tiny white rosettes;
this gave the shrub the air of a head of hair studded with flowers.
There was always an admiring crowd about it.
After viewing the shrub, Tholomyès exclaimed, “I offer you asses!” and
having agreed upon a price with the owner of the asses, they returned
by way of Vanvres and Issy. At Issy an incident occurred. The truly
national park, at that time owned by Bourguin the contractor, happened
to be wide open. They passed the gates, visited the manikin anchorite
in his grotto, tried the mysterious little effects of the famous
cabinet of mirrors, the wanton trap worthy of a satyr become a
millionaire or of Turcaret metamorphosed into a Priapus. They had
stoutly shaken the swing attached to the two chestnut-trees celebrated
by the Abbé de Bernis. As he swung these beauties, one after the other,
producing folds in the fluttering skirts which Greuze would have found
to his taste, amid peals of laughter, the Toulousan Tholomyès, who was
somewhat of a Spaniard, Toulouse being the cousin of Tolosa, sang, to a
melancholy chant, the old ballad _gallega_, probably inspired by some
lovely maid dashing in full flight upon a rope between two trees:—
“Soy de Badajoz,
Amor me llama,
Toda mi alma,
Es en mi ojos,
Porque enseñas,
A tuas piernas.
“Badajoz is my home,
And Love is my name;
To my eyes in flame,
All my soul doth come;
For instruction meet
I receive at thy feet”
Fantine alone refused to swing.
“I don’t like to have people put on airs like that,” muttered
Favourite, with a good deal of acrimony.
After leaving the asses there was a fresh delight; they crossed the
Seine in a boat, and proceeding from Passy on foot they reached the
barrier of l’Étoile. They had been up since five o’clock that morning,
as the reader will remember; but _bah! there is no such thing as
fatigue on Sunday_, said Favourite; _on Sunday fatigue does not work_.
About three o’clock the four couples, frightened at their happiness,
were sliding down the Russian mountains, a singular edifice which then
occupied the heights of Beaujon, and whose undulating line was visible
above the trees of the Champs-Élysées.
From time to time Favourite exclaimed:—
“And the surprise? I claim the surprise.”
“Patience,” replied Tholomyès.
CHAPTER V—AT BOMBARDA’S
The Russian mountains having been exhausted, they began to think about
dinner; and the radiant party of eight, somewhat weary at last, became
stranded in Bombarda’s public house, a branch establishment which had
been set up in the Champs-Élysées by that famous restaurant-keeper,
Bombarda, whose sign could then be seen in the Rue de Rivoli, near
Delorme Alley.
A large but ugly room, with an alcove and a bed at the end (they had
been obliged to put up with this accommodation in view of the Sunday
crowd); two windows whence they could survey beyond the elms, the quay
and the river; a magnificent August sunlight lightly touching the
panes; two tables; upon one of them a triumphant mountain of bouquets,
mingled with the hats of men and women; at the other the four couples
seated round a merry confusion of platters, dishes, glasses, and
bottles; jugs of beer mingled with flasks of wine; very little order on
the table, some disorder beneath it;
“They made beneath the table
A noise, a clatter of the feet that was abominable,”
says Molière.
This was the state which the shepherd idyl, begun at five o’clock in
the morning, had reached at half-past four in the afternoon. The sun
was setting; their appetites were satisfied.
The Champs-Élysées, filled with sunshine and with people, were nothing
but light and dust, the two things of which glory is composed. The
horses of Marly, those neighing marbles, were prancing in a cloud of
gold. Carriages were going and coming. A squadron of magnificent
body-guards, with their clarions at their head, were descending the
Avenue de Neuilly; the white flag, showing faintly rosy in the setting
sun, floated over the dome of the Tuileries. The Place de la Concorde,
which had become the Place Louis XV. once more, was choked with happy
promenaders. Many wore the silver fleur-de-lys suspended from the
white-watered ribbon, which had not yet wholly disappeared from
button-holes in the year 1817. Here and there choruses of little girls
threw to the winds, amid the passers-by, who formed into circles and
applauded, the then celebrated Bourbon air, which was destined to
strike the Hundred Days with lightning, and which had for its refrain:—
“Rendez-nous notre père de Gand,
Rendez-nous notre père.”
“Give us back our father from Ghent,
Give us back our father.”
Groups of dwellers in the suburbs, in Sunday array, sometimes even
decorated with the fleur-de-lys, like the bourgeois, scattered over the
large square and the Marigny square, were playing at rings and
revolving on the wooden horses; others were engaged in drinking; some
journeyman printers had on paper caps; their laughter was audible.
Everything was radiant. It was a time of undisputed peace and profound
royalist security; it was the epoch when a special and private report
of Chief of Police Anglès to the King, on the subject of the suburbs of
Paris, terminated with these lines:—
“Taking all things into consideration, Sire, there is nothing to be
feared from these people. They are as heedless and as indolent as cats.
The populace is restless in the provinces; it is not in Paris. These
are very pretty men, Sire. It would take all of two of them to make one
of your grenadiers. There is nothing to be feared on the part of the
populace of Paris the capital. It is remarkable that the stature of
this population should have diminished in the last fifty years; and the
populace of the suburbs is still more puny than at the time of the
Revolution. It is not dangerous. In short, it is an amiable rabble.”
Prefects of the police do not deem it possible that a cat can transform
itself into a lion; that does happen, however, and in that lies the
miracle wrought by the populace of Paris. Moreover, the cat so despised
by Count Anglès possessed the esteem of the republics of old. In their
eyes it was liberty incarnate; and as though to serve as pendant to the
Minerva Aptera of the Piræus, there stood on the public square in
Corinth the colossal bronze figure of a cat. The ingenuous police of
the Restoration beheld the populace of Paris in too “rose-colored” a
light; it is not so much of “an amiable rabble” as it is thought. The
Parisian is to the Frenchman what the Athenian was to the Greek: no one
sleeps more soundly than he, no one is more frankly frivolous and lazy
than he, no one can better assume the air of forgetfulness; let him not
be trusted nevertheless; he is ready for any sort of cool deed; but
when there is glory at the end of it, he is worthy of admiration in
every sort of fury. Give him a pike, he will produce the 10th of
August; give him a gun, you will have Austerlitz. He is Napoleon’s stay
and Danton’s resource. Is it a question of country, he enlists; is it a
question of liberty, he tears up the pavements. Beware! his hair filled
with wrath, is epic; his blouse drapes itself like the folds of a
chlamys. Take care! he will make of the first Rue Grenétat which comes
to hand Caudine Forks. When the hour strikes, this man of the faubourgs
will grow in stature; this little man will arise, and his gaze will be
terrible, and his breath will become a tempest, and there will issue
forth from that slender chest enough wind to disarrange the folds of
the Alps. It is, thanks to the suburban man of Paris, that the
Revolution, mixed with arms, conquers Europe. He sings; it is his
delight. Proportion his song to his nature, and you will see! As long
as he has for refrain nothing but _la Carmagnole_, he only overthrows
Louis XVI.; make him sing the _Marseillaise_, and he will free the
world.
This note jotted down on the margin of Anglès’ report, we will return
to our four couples. The dinner, as we have said, was drawing to its
close.
CHAPTER VI—A CHAPTER IN WHICH THEY ADORE EACH OTHER
Chat at table, the chat of love; it is as impossible to reproduce one
as the other; the chat of love is a cloud; the chat at table is smoke.
Fameuil and Dahlia were humming. Tholomyès was drinking. Zéphine was
laughing, Fantine smiling, Listolier blowing a wooden trumpet which he
had purchased at Saint-Cloud.
Favourite gazed tenderly at Blachevelle and said:—