Les Misérables, page 213
CHAPTER IV--A ROSE IN MISERY
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A very young girl was standing in the half-open door. The dormer windowof the garret, through which the light fell, was precisely oppositethe door, and illuminated the figure with a wan light. She was a frail,emaciated, slender creature; there was nothing but a chemise and apetticoat upon that chilled and shivering nakedness. Her girdle was astring, her head ribbon a string, her pointed shoulders emerged from herchemise, a blond and lymphatic pallor, earth-colored collar-bones, redhands, a half-open and degraded mouth, missing teeth, dull, bold, baseeyes; she had the form of a young girl who has missed her youth, and thelook of a corrupt old woman; fifty years mingled with fifteen; one ofthose beings which are both feeble and horrible, and which cause thoseto shudder whom they do not cause to weep.
Marius had risen, and was staring in a sort of stupor at this being, whowas almost like the forms of the shadows which traverse dreams.
The most heart-breaking thing of all was, that this young girl had notcome into the world to be homely. In her early childhood she must evenhave been pretty. The grace of her age was still struggling against thehideous, premature decrepitude of debauchery and poverty. The remains ofbeauty were dying away in that face of sixteen, like the pale sunlightwhich is extinguished under hideous clouds at dawn on a winter's day.
That face was not wholly unknown to Marius. He thought he rememberedhaving seen it somewhere.
"What do you wish, Mademoiselle?" he asked.
The young girl replied in her voice of a drunken convict:--
"Here is a letter for you, Monsieur Marius."
She called Marius by his name; he could not doubt that he was the personwhom she wanted; but who was this girl? How did she know his name?
Without waiting for him to tell her to advance, she entered. She enteredresolutely, staring, with a sort of assurance that made the heart bleed,at the whole room and the unmade bed. Her feet were bare. Large holesin her petticoat permitted glimpses of her long legs and her thin knees.She was shivering.
She held a letter in her hand, which she presented to Marius.
Marius, as he opened the letter, noticed that the enormous wafer whichsealed it was still moist. The message could not have come from adistance. He read:--
My amiable neighbor, young man: I have learned of your goodness to me, that you paid my rent six months ago. I bless you, young man. My eldest daughter will tell you that we have been without a morsel of bread for two days, four persons and my spouse ill. If I am not deseaved in my opinion, I think I may hope that your generous heart will melt at this statement and the desire will subjugate you to be propitious to me by daigning to lavish on me a slight favor.
I am with the distinguished consideration which is due to the benefactors of humanity,--
Jondrette.
P.S. My eldest daughter will await your orders, dear Monsieur Marius.
This letter, coming in the very midst of the mysterious adventure whichhad occupied Marius' thoughts ever since the preceding evening, was likea candle in a cellar. All was suddenly illuminated.
This letter came from the same place as the other four. There was thesame writing, the same style, the same orthography, the same paper, thesame odor of tobacco.
There were five missives, five histories, five signatures, and a singlesigner. The Spanish Captain Don Alvarès, the unhappy Mistress Balizard,the dramatic poet Genflot, the old comedian Fabantou, were all fournamed Jondrette, if, indeed, Jondrette himself were named Jondrette.
Marius had lived in the house for a tolerably long time, and he had had,as we have said, but very rare occasion to see, to even catch a glimpseof, his extremely mean neighbors. His mind was elsewhere, and where themind is, there the eyes are also. He had been obliged more than once topass the Jondrettes in the corridor or on the stairs; but they were mereforms to him; he had paid so little heed to them, that, on the precedingevening, he had jostled the Jondrette girls on the boulevard, withoutrecognizing them, for it had evidently been they, and it was with greatdifficulty that the one who had just entered his room had awakened inhim, in spite of disgust and pity, a vague recollection of having mether elsewhere.
Now he saw everything clearly. He understood that his neighborJondrette, in his distress, exercised the industry of speculating on thecharity of benevolent persons, that he procured addresses, and that hewrote under feigned names to people whom he judged to be wealthy andcompassionate, letters which his daughters delivered at their riskand peril, for this father had come to such a pass, that he risked hisdaughters; he was playing a game with fate, and he used them as thestake. Marius understood that probably, judging from their flight on theevening before, from their breathless condition, from their terrorand from the words of slang which he had overheard, these unfortunatecreatures were plying some inexplicably sad profession, and that theresult of the whole was, in the midst of human society, as it is nowconstituted, two miserable beings who were neither girls nor women, aspecies of impure and innocent monsters produced by misery.
Sad creatures, without name, or sex, or age, to whom neither good norevil were any longer possible, and who, on emerging from childhood,have already nothing in this world, neither liberty, nor virtue, norresponsibility. Souls which blossomed out yesterday, and are fadedto-day, like those flowers let fall in the streets, which are soiledwith every sort of mire, while waiting for some wheel to crush them.Nevertheless, while Marius bent a pained and astonished gaze on her, theyoung girl was wandering back and forth in the garret with the audacityof a spectre. She kicked about, without troubling herself as to hernakedness. Occasionally her chemise, which was untied and torn, fellalmost to her waist. She moved the chairs about, she disarranged thetoilet articles which stood on the commode, she handled Marius' clothes,she rummaged about to see what there was in the corners.
"Hullo!" said she, "you have a mirror!"
And she hummed scraps of vaudevilles, as though she had been alone,frolicsome refrains which her hoarse and guttural voice renderedlugubrious.
An indescribable constraint, weariness, and humiliation were perceptiblebeneath this hardihood. Effrontery is a disgrace.
Nothing could be more melancholy than to see her sport about the room,and, so to speak, flit with the movements of a bird which is frightenedby the daylight, or which has broken its wing. One felt that under otherconditions of education and destiny, the gay and over-free mien of thisyoung girl might have turned out sweet and charming. Never, even amonganimals, does the creature born to be a dove change into an osprey. Thatis only to be seen among men.
Marius reflected, and allowed her to have her way.
She approached the table.
"Ah!" said she, "books!"
A flash pierced her glassy eye. She resumed, and her accent expressedthe happiness which she felt in boasting of something, to which no humancreature is insensible:--
"I know how to read, I do!"
She eagerly seized a book which lay open on the table, and read withtolerable fluency:--
"--General Bauduin received orders to take the château of Hougomontwhich stands in the middle of the plain of Waterloo, with fivebattalions of his brigade."
She paused.
"Ah! Waterloo! I know about that. It was a battle long ago. My fatherwas there. My father has served in the armies. We are fine Bonapartistsin our house, that we are! Waterloo was against the English."
She laid down the book, caught up a pen, and exclaimed:--
"And I know how to write, too!"
She dipped her pen in the ink, and turning to Marius:--
"Do you want to see? Look here, I'm going to write a word to show you."
And before he had time to answer, she wrote on a sheet of white paper,which lay in the middle of the table: "The bobbies are here."
Then throwing down the pen:--
"There are no faults of orthography. You can look. We have received aneducation, my sister and I. We have not always been as we are now. Wewere not made--"
Here she paused, fixed her dull eyes on Marius, and burst out laughing,saying, with an intonation which contained every form of anguish,stifled by every form of cynicism:--
"Bah!"
And she began to hum these words to a gay air:--
"J'ai faim, mon père." I am hungry, father. Pas de fricot. I have no food. J'ai froid, ma mère. I am cold, mother. Pas de tricot. I have no clothes. Grelotte, Lolotte! Lolotte! Shiver, Sanglote, Sob, Jacquot!" Jacquot!"
She had hardly finished this couplet, when she exclaimed:--
"Do you ever go to the play, Monsieur Marius? I do. I have a littlebrother who is a friend of the artists, and who gives me ticketssometimes. But I don't like the benches in the galleries. One is crampedand uncomfortable there. There are rough people there sometimes; andpeople who smell bad."
Then she scrutinized Marius, assumed a singular air and said:--
"Do you know, Mr. Marius, that you are a very handsome fellow?"
And at the same moment the same idea occurred to them both, and madeher smile and him blush. She stepped up to him, and laid her hand on hisshoulder: "You pay no heed to me, but I know you, Mr. Marius. I meet youhere on the staircase, and then I often see you going to a person namedFather Mabeuf who lives in the direction of Austerlitz, sometimes when Ihave been strolling in that quarter. It is very becoming to you to haveyour hair tumbled thus."
She tried to render her voice soft, but only succeeded in making it verydeep. A portion of her words was lost in the transit from her larynx toher lips, as though on a piano where some notes are missing.
Marius had retreated gently.
"Mademoiselle," said he, with his cool gravity, "I have here a packagewhich belongs to you, I think. Permit me to return it to you."
And he held out the envelope containing the four letters.
She clapped her hands and exclaimed:--
"We have been looking everywhere for that!"
Then she eagerly seized the package and opened the envelope, saying asshe did so:--
"Dieu de Dieu! how my sister and I have hunted! And it was you who foundit! On the boulevard, was it not? It must have been on the boulevard?You see, we let it fall when we were running. It was that brat of asister of mine who was so stupid. When we got home, we could not find itanywhere. As we did not wish to be beaten, as that is useless, as thatis entirely useless, as that is absolutely useless, we said that we hadcarried the letters to the proper persons, and that they had said to us:'Nix.' So here they are, those poor letters! And how did you find outthat they belonged to me? Ah! yes, the writing. So it was you that wejostled as we passed last night. We couldn't see. I said to my sister:'Is it a gentleman?' My sister said to me: 'I think it is a gentleman.'"
In the meanwhile she had unfolded the petition addressed to "thebenevolent gentleman of the church of Saint-Jacques-du-Haut-Pas."
"Here!" said she, "this is for that old fellow who goes to mass. By theway, this is his hour. I'll go and carry it to him. Perhaps he will giveus something to breakfast on."
Then she began to laugh again, and added:--
"Do you know what it will mean if we get a breakfast today? It will meanthat we shall have had our breakfast of the day before yesterday, ourbreakfast of yesterday, our dinner of to-day, and all that at once, andthis morning. Come! Parbleu! if you are not satisfied, dogs, burst!"
This reminded Marius of the wretched girl's errand to himself. Hefumbled in his waistcoat pocket, and found nothing there.
The young girl went on, and seemed to have no consciousness of Marius'presence.
"I often go off in the evening. Sometimes I don't come home again. Lastwinter, before we came here, we lived under the arches of the bridges.We huddled together to keep from freezing. My little sister cried. Howmelancholy the water is! When I thought of drowning myself, I saidto myself: 'No, it's too cold.' I go out alone, whenever I choose, Isometimes sleep in the ditches. Do you know, at night, when I walk alongthe boulevard, I see the trees like forks, I see houses, all black andas big as Notre Dame, I fancy that the white walls are the river, I sayto myself: 'Why, there's water there!' The stars are like the lamps inilluminations, one would say that they smoked and that the wind blewthem out, I am bewildered, as though horses were breathing in my ears;although it is night, I hear hand-organs and spinning-machines, and Idon't know what all. I think people are flinging stones at me, I fleewithout knowing whither, everything whirls and whirls. You feel veryqueer when you have had no food."
And then she stared at him with a bewildered air.
By dint of searching and ransacking his pockets, Marius had finallycollected five francs sixteen sous. This was all he owned in the worldfor the moment. "At all events," he thought, "there is my dinner forto-day, and to-morrow we will see." He kept the sixteen sous, and handedthe five francs to the young girl.
She seized the coin.
"Good!" said she, "the sun is shining!"
And, as though the sun had possessed the property of melting theavalanches of slang in her brain, she went on:--
"Five francs! the shiner! a monarch! in this hole! Ain't this fine!You're a jolly thief! I'm your humble servant! Bravo for the goodfellows! Two days' wine! and meat! and stew! we'll have a royal feast!and a good fill!"
She pulled her chemise up on her shoulders, made a low bow to Marius,then a familiar sign with her hand, and went towards the door, saying:--
"Good morning, sir. It's all right. I'll go and find my old man."
As she passed, she caught sight of a dry crust of bread on the commode,which was moulding there amid the dust; she flung herself upon it andbit into it, muttering:--
"That's good! it's hard! it breaks my teeth!"
Then she departed.
