Les Misérables, page 37
CHAPTER III--FOUR AND FOUR
It is hard nowadays to picture to one's self what a pleasure-trip ofstudents and grisettes to the country was like, forty-five years ago.The suburbs of Paris are no longer the same; the physiognomy of whatmay be called circumparisian life has changed completely in the lasthalf-century; where there was the cuckoo, there is the railway car;where there was a tender-boat, there is now the steamboat; people speakof Fécamp nowadays as they spoke of Saint-Cloud in those days. The Parisof 1862 is a city which has France for its outskirts.
The four couples conscientiously went through with all the countryfollies possible at that time. The vacation was beginning, and it was awarm, bright, summer day. On the preceding day, Favourite, the only onewho knew how to write, had written the following to Tholomyès in thename of the four: "It is a good hour to emerge from happiness." Thatis why they rose at five o'clock in the morning. Then they went toSaint-Cloud by the coach, looked at the dry cascade and exclaimed, "Thismust be very beautiful when there is water!" They breakfasted at the_Tête-Noir_, where Castaing had not yet been; they treated themselvesto a game of ring-throwing under the quincunx of trees of the grandfountain; they ascended Diogenes' lantern, they gambled for macaroonsat the roulette establishment of the Pont de Sèvres, picked bouquets atPateaux, bought reed-pipes at Neuilly, ate apple tarts everywhere, andwere perfectly happy.
The young girls rustled and chatted like warblers escaped from theircage. It was a perfect delirium. From time to time they bestowed littletaps on the young men. Matutinal intoxication of life! adorable years!the wings of the dragonfly quiver. Oh, whoever you may be, do you notremember? Have you rambled through the brushwood, holding aside thebranches, on account of the charming head which is coming on behind you?Have you slid, laughing, down a slope all wet with rain, with a belovedwoman holding your hand, and crying, "Ah, my new boots! what a statethey are in!"
Let us say at once that that merry obstacle, a shower, was lacking inthe case of this good-humored party, although Favourite had said as theyset out, with a magisterial and maternal tone, _"The slugs are crawlingin the paths,--a sign of rain, children."_
All four were madly pretty. A good old classic poet, then famous, a goodfellow who had an Éléonore, M. le Chevalier de Labouisse, as he strolledthat day beneath the chestnut-trees of Saint-Cloud, saw them pass aboutten o'clock in the morning, and exclaimed, "There is one too many ofthem," as he thought of the Graces. Favourite, Blachevelle's friend, theone aged three and twenty, the old one, ran on in front under the greatgreen boughs, jumped the ditches, stalked distractedly over bushes, andpresided over this merry-making with the spirit of a young female faun.Zéphine and Dahlia, whom chance had made beautiful in such a way thatthey set each off when they were together, and completed each other,never left each other, more from an instinct of coquetry than fromfriendship, and clinging to each other, they assumed English poses; thefirst _keepsakes_ had just made their appearance, melancholy was dawningfor women, as later on, Byronism dawned for men; and the hair of thetender sex began to droop dolefully. Zéphine and Dahlia had their hairdressed in rolls. Listolier and Fameuil, who were engaged in discussingtheir professors, explained to Fantine the difference that existedbetween M. Delvincourt and M. Blondeau.
Blachevelle seemed to have been created expressly to carry Favourite'ssingle-bordered, imitation India shawl of Ternaux's manufacture, on hisarm on Sundays.
Tholomyès followed, dominating the group. He was very gay, but one feltthe force of government in him; there was dictation in his joviality;his principal ornament was a pair of trousers of elephant-leg pattern ofnankeen, with straps of braided copper wire; he carried a stout rattanworth two hundred francs in his hand, and, as he treated himself toeverything, a strange thing called a cigar in his mouth. Nothing wassacred to him; he smoked.
"That Tholomyès is astounding!" said the others, with veneration. "Whattrousers! What energy!"
As for Fantine, she was a joy to behold. Her splendid teeth hadevidently received an office from God,--laughter. She preferred to carryher little hat of sewed straw, with its long white strings, in her handrather than on her head. Her thick blond hair, which was inclined towave, and which easily uncoiled, and which it was necessary to fastenup incessantly, seemed made for the flight of Galatea under thewillows. Her rosy lips babbled enchantingly. The corners of her mouthvoluptuously turned up, as in the antique masks of Erigone, had anair of encouraging the audacious; but her long, shadowy lashes droopeddiscreetly over the jollity of the lower part of the face as though tocall a halt. There was something indescribably harmonious and strikingabout her entire dress. She wore a gown of mauve barège, little reddishbrown buskins, whose ribbons traced an X on her fine, white, open-workedstockings, and that sort of muslin spencer, a Marseilles invention,whose name, _canezou_, a corruption of the words _quinze août_,pronounced after the fashion of the Canebière, signifies fine weather,heat, and midday. The three others, less timid, as we have alreadysaid, wore low-necked dresses without disguise, which in summer, beneathflower-adorned hats, are very graceful and enticing; but by the sideof these audacious outfits, blond Fantine's _canezou_, with itstransparencies, its indiscretion, and its reticence, concealing anddisplaying at one and the same time, seemed an alluring godsend ofdecency, and the famous Court of Love, presided over by the Vicomtessede Cette, with the sea-green eyes, would, perhaps, have awarded theprize for coquetry to this _canezou_, in the contest for the prize ofmodesty. The most ingenious is, at times, the wisest. This does happen.
Brilliant of face, delicate of profile, with eyes of a deep blue, heavylids, feet arched and small, wrists and ankles admirably formed, a whiteskin which, here and there allowed the azure branching of the veins tobe seen, joy, a cheek that was young and fresh, the robust throat of theJuno of Ægina, a strong and supple nape of the neck, shoulders modelledas though by Coustou, with a voluptuous dimple in the middle, visiblethrough the muslin; a gayety cooled by dreaminess; sculptural andexquisite--such was Fantine; and beneath these feminine adornments andthese ribbons one could divine a statue, and in that statue a soul.
Fantine was beautiful, without being too conscious of it. Those raredreamers, mysterious priests of the beautiful who silently confronteverything with perfection, would have caught a glimpse in this littleworking-woman, through the transparency of her Parisian grace, of theancient sacred euphony. This daughter of the shadows was thoroughbred.She was beautiful in the two ways--style and rhythm. Style is the formof the ideal; rhythm is its movement.
We have said that Fantine was joy; she was also modesty.
To an observer who studied her attentively, that which breathed fromher athwart all the intoxication of her age, the season, and herlove affair, was an invincible expression of reserve and modesty. Sheremained a little astonished. This chaste astonishment is the shadeof difference which separates Psyche from Venus. Fantine had the long,white, fine fingers of the vestal virgin who stirs the ashes of thesacred fire with a golden pin. Although she would have refused nothingto Tholomyès, as we shall have more than ample opportunity to see, herface in repose was supremely virginal; a sort of serious and almostaustere dignity suddenly overwhelmed her at certain times, and therewas nothing more singular and disturbing than to see gayety become sosuddenly extinct there, and meditation succeed to cheerfulness withoutany transition state. This sudden and sometimes severely accentuatedgravity resembled the disdain of a goddess. Her brow, her nose, herchin, presented that equilibrium of outline which is quite distinctfrom equilibrium of proportion, and from which harmony of countenanceresults; in the very characteristic interval which separates the baseof the nose from the upper lip, she had that imperceptible and charmingfold, a mysterious sign of chastity, which makes Barberousse fall inlove with a Diana found in the treasures of Iconia.
Love is a fault; so be it. Fantine was innocence floating high overfault.
