lesmiscollageproject

[lesmiscollageproject]

A man of about fifty, he was good-natured but always seemed preoccupied; this was all that could be said about him.

[lesmiscollageproject]

On his arrival at Montreuil-sur-mer he had the clothes, the manners, and the language of a laborer.

It seems that the very day on which he obscurely entered the little city, just at dusk on a December evening, with a bundle on his back, and a thorn stick in his hand, a great fire had broken out in the town hall. This man rushed into the fire and, risking his life, saved two children, who proved to be those of the captain of the gendarmerie, and in the hurry and gratitude of the moment no one thought to ask him for his passport. He was known from that time by the name Father Madeleine.

[lesmiscollageproject]

From time immemorial the particular occupation of the inhabitants of Montreuil-sur-mer had been the imitation of English jet beads and German black glass trinkets. The industry had always been slow because of the high price of the raw material. At the time of Fantine’s return to Montreuil-sur-mer a complete transformation had been carried out in the production of these “black goods.” Toward the end of 1815, an unknown man had come to settle in the city and had conceived the idea of substituting shellac for resin in the manufacturing process; and for bracelets, in particular, he made the clasps by simply bending the ends of the metal together instead of soldering them.

This minor change had caused a revolution.

[lesmiscollageproject]

In the neighborhood she was called the Lark. People like figurative names and were happy to give a nickname to this child, no larger than a bird, trembling, frightened, and shivering, first to wake every morning in the house and the village, always in the street or in the fields before dawn.

Except that the poor lark never sang.

[lesmiscollageproject]

People in the village said, “What good folk those Thenardiers are! They’re not rich, and yet they bring up a poor abandoned child.”

They thought Cosette was forgotten by her mother.

[lesmiscollageproject]

When this sum was spent, the Thenardiers began to look on the little girl as a child they sheltered for charity and treated her accordingly. Her clothes being gone, they dressed her in the castoff skirts and blouses of the little Thenardiers -- that is, in rags. They fed her on everyone’s leftovers, a little better than the dog but a little worse than the cat. The dog and cat were her messmates. Cosette ate with them under the table off a wooden dish like theirs.

[lesmiscollageproject]

We only have to look at some men to distrust them, for we feel the darkness of their souls in two directions. They are restless as to what is behind them, and are threatening as to what is in front of them. They are full of mystery. We can answer no more for what they have done than for what they will do. The shadows in their eyes give them away. Hearing them utter a single word, or seeing them make one gesture, we catch glimpses of guilty secrets in their past and dark mysteries in their future.

[lesmiscollageproject]

A neighbor of the Thenardiers met this mother on the street after she had left her child, and he came in, saying, “I have just met a women in the street, who was crying as if her heart would break.”

[lesmiscollageproject]

“I must think it over,” Madame Thenardier said.

“I will give six francs a month.”

Here a man’s voice was heard from within: “Not less than seven francs, and six months paid in advance.”

[lesmiscollageproject]

This newcomer was very cheerful; the goodness of the mother is written in the gaiety of the child; she had taken a small piece of wood, which she used as a spade, and was energetically digging a hole fit for a fly. The gravedigger’s work is fun when done by a child.

[lesmiscollageproject]

This Madame Thenardier was a red-headed, large but angular woman, the soldier’s wife type in all its horror, with, strangely enough, a languid air gained from novel reading.

[lesmiscollageproject]

We will see that Fantine possessed a fierce courage.

[lesmiscollageproject]

She had a vague feeling of being on the brink of danger, of slipping into the streets.

[lesmiscollageproject]

Mother’s arms are made of tenderness, and sweet sleep blesses the child who lies within.

[lesmiscollageproject]

Above and around the delicate heads, steeped in joy and bathed in light, the gigantic hulk, black with rust and almost frightful with its tangled curves and sharp angles, arched like the mouth of a cave.

[lesmiscollageproject]

It was the front part of one of those trolleys for carrying heavy articles, used in wooded regions for hauling joists and tree trunks. It consisted of a massive iron axletree with a pivot to which a heavy pole was attached and which was supported by two enormous wheels. The whole thing was squat, crushing, and misshapen. It might have been mistaken for a gigantic gun-carriage.

[lesmiscollageproject]

Fantine laughed like the others, but an hour later, when she was back in her room, she wept. It was her first love, as we have said; she had given herself to Tholomyes as to a husband, and the poor girl had his child.