Les Misérables, v. 4/5: The Idyll and the Epic

  CHAPTER I.

  A MALICIOUS TRICK OF THE WIND.

  Since 1823, while the public-house at Montfermeil was sinking andgradually being swallowed up, not in the abyss of a bankruptcy, but inthe sewer of small debts, the Thénardiers had had two more children,both male. These made five, two daughters and three boys, and they werea good many. The mother had got rid of the latter while still babiesby a singular piece of good luck. Got rid of, that is exactly theterm, for in this woman there was only a fragment of nature; it is aphenomenon, however, of which there is more than one instance. Like theMaréchale de Lamothe-Houdancourt, the Thénardier was only a mother asfar as her daughters, and her maternity ended there. Her hatred of thehuman race began with her boys; on the side of her sons her cruelty wasperpendicular, and her heart had in this respect a dismal steepness.As we have seen, she detested the eldest, and execrated the twoothers. Why? Because she did. The most terrible of motives and mostindisputable of answers is, Because. "I do not want a pack of squallingbrats," this mother said.

  Let us now explain how the Thénardiers managed to dispose of their lasttwo children, and even make a profit of them. That Magnon, to whom wereferred a few pages back, was the same who continued to get an annuityout of old Gillenormand for the two children she had. She lived on theQuai des Célestins, at the corner of that ancient Rue du Petit-Musc,which has done all it could to change its bad reputation into a goododor. Our readers will remember the great croup epidemic, which,thirty-five years ago, desolated the banks of the Seine in Paris, andof which science took advantage to make experiments on a grand scale asto the efficacy of inhaling alum, for which the external application oftincture of iodine has been so usefully substituted in our day. In thisepidemic Magnon lost her two boys, still very young, on the same day,one in the morning, the other in the evening. It was a blow, for thesechildren were precious to their mother, as they represented eightyfrancs a month. These eighty francs were very punctually paid by thereceiver of M. Gillenormand's rents, a M. Barge, a retired bailiff wholived in the Rue de Sicile. When the children were dead the annuity wasburied, and so Magnon sought an expedient. In the dark free-masonryof evil of which she formed part everything is known, secrets arekept, and people help each other. Magnon wanted two children, andMadame Thénardier had two of the same size and age; it was a goodarrangement for one, and an excellent investment for the other. Thelittle Thénardiers became the little Magnons, and Magnon left the Quaides Célestins, and went to live in the Rue Cloche-Perce. In Paris theidentity which attaches an individual to himself is broken by movingfrom one street to the others. The authorities, not being warned byanything, made no objections, and the substitution was effected in thesimplest way in the world. Thénardier, however, demanded for this loanof children ten francs a month, which Magnon promised, and even paid.We need not say that M. Gillenormand continued to sacrifice himself,and went every six months to see the children. He did not notice thechange. "Oh, sir," Magnon would say to him, "how like you they are, tobe sure."

  Thénardier, to whom avatars were an easy task, seized this opportunityto become Jondrette. His two daughters and Gavroche had scarcely hadtime to perceive that they had two little brothers; for in a certainstage of misery people are affected by a sort of spectral indifference,and regard human beings as ghosts. Your nearest relatives are often toyou no more than vague forms of the shadow, hardly to be distinguishedfrom the nebulous back-ground of life, and which easily become blendedagain with the invisible. On the evening of the day when MotherThénardier handed over her two babes to Magnon, with the well-expressedwill of renouncing them forever, she felt, or pretended to feel,a scruple, and said to her husband, "Why, that is deserting one'schildren!" But Thénardier, magisterial and phlegmatic, cauterized thescruple with this remark, "Jean Jacques Rousseau did better." Fromscruple the mother passed to anxiety: "But suppose the police were totrouble us? Tell me, Monsieur Thénardier, whether what we have doneis permitted?" Thénardier replied: "Everything is permitted. Nobodywill see through it out of the blue. Besides, no one has any interestin inquiring closely after children that have not a sou." Magnon wasa sort of she-dandy in crime, and dressed handsomely. She shared herrooms, which were furnished in a conventional and miserable way, with avery clever Gallicized English thief. This Englishwoman, a naturalizedParisian, respectable through her powerful and rich connections, whowas closely connected with medals of the library and the diamonds ofMademoiselle Mars, was at a later date celebrated in the annals ofcrime. She was called "Mamselle Miss." The two little ones who hadfallen into Magnon's clutches had no cause to complain; recommendedby the eighty francs, they were taken care of, like everything whichbrings in a profit. They were not badly clothed, not badly fed, treatedalmost like "little gentlemen," and better off with their false motherthan the true one. Magnon acted the lady, and never talked slang intheir presence. They spent several years there, and Thénardier auguredwell of it. One day he happened to say to Magnon as she handed him themonthly ten francs, "The 'father' must give them an education."

  All at once these two poor little creatures, hitherto tolerably wellprotected, even by their evil destiny, were suddenly hurled into life,and forced to begin it. An arrest of criminals _en masse_, like thatin the Jondrette garret, being necessarily complicated with researchesand ulterior incarcerations, is a veritable disaster for that hideousand occult counter-society which lives beneath public society; and anadventure of this nature produces all sorts of convulsions in thisgloomy world. The catastrophe of the Thénardiers was the catastrophe ofMagnon. One day, a little while after Magnon had given Éponine the noterelating to the Rue Plumet, the police made a sudden descent on the RueCloche-Perce. Magnon was arrested, as was Mamselle Miss, and all theinhabitants of the house which were suspected were caught in the haul.The two little boys were playing at the time in the back-yard, and sawnothing of the raid; but when they tried to go in they found the doorlocked and the house empty. A cobbler whose stall was opposite calledto them and gave them a paper which "their mother" had left for them.On the paper was this address, "M. Barge, receiver of rents, No. 8, Ruedu Roi de Sicile." The cobbler said to them: "You no longer live here.Go there, it is close by, the first street on your left. Ask your waywith that paper." The boys set off, the elder leading the younger, andholding in his hand the paper which was to serve as their guide. It wascold, and his little numbed fingers held the paper badly, and at thecorner of a lane a puff of wind tore it from him; and as it was nightthe boy could not find it again. They began wandering about the streetshaphazard.