Les miserables (Abridged) - Victor Hugo [252]
“Truly magnanimous man,
“Your very humble
And very obedient servant,
“P. FABANTOU, DRAMATIC ARTIST.”
After reading these four letters, Marius did not find himself much wiser than before.
In the first place none of the signers gave his address.
Then they seemed to come from four different individuals, Don Alvarès, Mother Balizard, the poet Genflot, and the dramatic artist Fabantou; but, strangely enough, these letters were all four written in the same hand.
What could one conclude from that, except that they came from the same person?
Moreover, and this rendered the conjecture still more probable, the paper, coarse and yellow, was the same in all four, the odour of tobacco was the same, and although there was an evident endeavour to vary the style, the same faults of orthography were reproduced with unruffled assurance, and Genflot, the man of letters, was no more free from them than the Spanish captain.
To endeavour to unriddle this little mystery was a useless labour. If it had not been a lost object, it would have had the appearance of a mystification. Marius was too sad to take a joke kindly even from chance, or to lend himself to the game which the street pavement seemed to wish to play with him. It appeared to him that he was like Colin Maillard among the four letters, which were mocking him.dn
Nothing, however, indicated that these letters belonged to the girls whom Marius had met on the boulevard. After all, they were but waste paper evidently without value.
Marius put them back into the envelope, threw it into a corner, and went to bed.
About seven o‘clock in the morning, he had got up and breakfasted, and was trying to set about his work when there was a gentle rap at his door.
As he owned nothing, he never locked his door, except sometimes, and that very rarely, when he was about some pressing piece of work. And, indeed, even when absent, he left his key in the lock. “You will be robbed,” said Ma‘am Bougon. “Of what?” said Marius. The fact is, however, that one day somebody had stolen an old pair of boots, to the great triumph of Ma’am Bougon.
There was a second rap, very gentle like the first.
“Come in,” said Marius.
The door opened.
“What do you want, Ma‘am Bougon?” asked Marius, without raising his eyes from the books and papers which he had on his table.
A voice, which was not Ma‘am Bougon’s, answered:
“I beg your pardon, Monsieur—”
It was a hollow, cracked, rasping voice, the voice of a congested old man, roughened by brandy and by strong liquors.
Marius turned quickly and saw a girl.
3 (4)
A ROSE IN DIRE POVERTY
A GIRL who was quite young, was standing in the half-opened door. The little round window through which the light found its way into the garret was exactly opposite the door, and lit up this form with a pallid light. It was a pale, puny, meagre creature, nothing but a chemise and a skirt covered a shivering and chilly nakedness. A string for a belt, a string for a head-dress, sharp shoulders protruding from the chemise, a blond and lymphatic pallor, dirty shoulder-blades, red hands, the mouth open and sunken, some teeth gone, the eyes dull, bold, and drooping, the form of an unripe young girl and the look of a corrupted old woman; fifty years joined with fifteen; one of those beings who are both feeble and horrible at once, and who make those shudder whom they do not make weep.do
Marius arose and gazed with a kind of astonishment upon this being, so much like the shadowy forms which pass across our dreams.
The most poignant thing about it was that this young girl had not come into the world to be ugly. In her early childhood, she must have even been pretty. The grace of her youth was still struggling against the hideous, premature old age brought on by debauchery and poverty. A remnant of beauty was dying out upon this face of sixteen, like the pale sun which is extinguished by frightful clouds at the dawn of a winter’s day.
The face was not absolutely