CHAPTER I.
THE WATER QUESTION AT MONTFERMEIL.
Montfermeil is situated between Livry and Chelles, on the southernslope of the lofty plateau which separates the Ourque from the Marne.At the present day it is a rather large place, adorned with stuccovillas all the year round, and with holiday-making cits on Sunday. In1823 there were neither so many white houses nor so many happy citsas there are now, and it was merely a village in the woods. A visitorcertainly came across here and there a few country-houses of the lastcentury, recognizable by their air of pretension, their balconiesof twisted iron, and the tall windows, in which the little squaresproduce all sorts of green hues on the white of the closed shutters.But Montfermeil was not the less a village; retired cloth-dealers andpersons fond of country life had not yet discovered it. It was a quiet,pleasant spot, which was not on a road to anywhere. Persons lived therecheaply that peasant life which is so tranquil and abundant. The onlything was that water was scarce, owing to the elevation of the plateau,and it had to be fetched from some distance. That end of the villagewhich was on the Gagny side obtained its water from the splendid pondsin the forest there; but the other end, which surrounds the church andis on the Chelles side, could only obtain drinking-water from a littlespring about a quarter of an hour's walk from Montfermeil, near theroad to Chelles; laying in water was therefore a hard task for everyfamily. The large houses and the aristocracy, among which Thénardier'spot-house may be reckoned, paid a liard a bucket to a man whose tradeit was, and who earned by it about eight sous a day. But this man onlyworked till seven P.M. in summer, and till five in winter; and oncenight had set in and the ground-floor shutters were closed, any personwho had no water to drink must either fetch it or go without.
This was the terror of the poor creature whom the reader will not haveforgotten, little Cosette. It will be remembered that Cosette wasuseful to the Thénardiers in two ways,--they made the mother pay andthe child act as servant. Hence when the mother ceased payment, forthe reason which we know, the Thénardiers kept Cosette, who took theplace of a servant. In this quality she had to fetch water when it waswanted, and the child, terrified at the idea of going to the springat night, was very careful that the house should never be withoutwater. Christmas of 1823 was peculiarly brilliant at Montfermeil; thebeginning of the winter was mild, and there had been neither snownor frost. Some mountebanks, who came from Paris, had obtained leavefrom the mayor to erect their booth in the village high street, and aparty of travelling hawkers had put their stalls in the church square,and even in the lane in which Thénardier's pot-house was situated.This filled the inns and pot-houses, and produced a noisy, joyouslife in this quiet little place. As a faithful historian we are boundto add that among the curiosities displayed in the market-place wasa menagerie, in which some ragged fellows showed the peasants ofMontfermeil one of those terrific Brazilian vultures of which the ParisMuseum did not possess a specimen till 1845, and which have a tricolorcockade for an eye. Naturalists, I believe, call this bird CaracaraPolyborus; it belongs to the Apicide order and the vulture family. Afew old Bonapartist soldiers living in the village went to see thisbird with devotion, and the mountebanks declared that the tricolorcockade was a unique phenomenon, and expressly produced by Nature fortheir menagerie.
On the Christmas evening several carters and hawkers were sitting todrink, round four or five candles, in Thénardier's tap-room. This roomwas like those usually found in pot-houses; there were tables, pewterpots, bottles, drinkers, and smokers, but little light, and a gooddeal of uproar. The date of the year was, however, indicated by thetwo objects, fashionable at that time among tradespeople, and whichwere on a table,--a kaleidoscope and a lamp of clouded tin. MadameThénardier was watching the supper, which was roasting before a brightclear fire, while her husband was drinking with his guests and talkingpolitics. In addition to the political remarks, which mainly referredto the Spanish war and the Duc d'Angoulême, local parentheses like thefollowing could be heard through the Babel:--
"Over at Nanterre and Suresne the vintage has been very productive,and where people expected ten barrels they have a dozen. The grapeswere very juicy when put under the press."--"But the grapes couldnot have been ripe?"--"In these parts, they must not be picked ripe,for the wine becomes oily in spring."--"Then it must be a very poorwine?"--"There are poorer wines than those about here," etc.
Or else a miller exclaimed,--
"Are we responsible for what there is in the sack? We find a lot ofsmall seeds, which we can't waste time in sifting, and which mustpass under the mill-stones; such as tares, lucern, cockles, vetches,amaranths, hemp-seed, and a number of other weeds, without countingthe pebbles which are so frequent in some sorts of wheat, especiallyBreton wheat. I don't like grinding Breton wheat, any more than sawyerslike sawing beams in which there are nails. You can fancy the bad dustall this makes in the hopper, and then people complain unfairly of theflour, for it is no fault of ours."
Between two windows a mower seated at a table with a farmer, who wasmaking a bargain to have a field mown in spring, said,--
"There is no harm in the grass being damp, for it cuts better. But yourgrass is tender, and hard to cut, sir, for it is so young, and bendsbefore the scythe," etc. etc.
Cosette was seated at her usual place, the cross-bar of the table, nearthe chimney; she was in rags, her bare feet were thrust into woodenshoes, and she was knitting, by the fire-light, stockings intendedfor the young Thénardiers. Two merry children could be heard laughingand prattling in an adjoining room; they were Éponine and Azelma. Acat-o'-nine-tails hung from a nail by the side of the chimney. Attimes, the cry of a baby somewhere in the house was audible through thenoise of the tap-room; it was a little boy Madame Thénardier had givenbirth to one winter, "without knowing how," she used to say, "it wasthe effect of the cold," and who was a little over three years of age.The mother suckled him, but did not love him; when his cries becametoo troublesome, Thénardier would say,--"There's your brat squalling;go and see what he wants." "Bah!" the mother would answer, "he's anuisance;" and the poor deserted little wretch would continue to cry inthe darkness.