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By Root 1404 0

any other name. At the time of her birth, the Directory was still in existence.v She could have no family name, for she had no family; she could have no baptismal name, for then there was no church. She was named at the pleasure of the first passer-by who found her, a mere infant, straying barefoot in the streets. She received a name as she received the water from the clouds on her head when it rained. She was called little Fantine. Nobody knew anything more of her. Such was the manner in which this human being had come into life. At the age of ten, Fantine left the city and went to work among the tenant farmers of the suburbs. At fifteen, she came to Paris, to “seek her fortune.” Fantine was beautiful and remained pure as long as she could. She was a pretty blonde with fine teeth. She had gold and pearls for her dowry; but the gold was on her head and the pearls in her mouth.

She worked to live; then, also to live, for the heart too has its hunger, she loved.

She loved Tholomyès.

To him, it was a fling; to her a passion. The streets of the Latin Quarter, which swarm with students and grisettes, saw the beginning of this dream.w Fantine, in those labyrinths of the hill of the Pantheon, where so many affairs are knotted and unloosed, long fled from Tholomyès, but in such a way as always to meet him again. There is a way of avoiding a person which resembles a search. In short, the eclogue took place.x

Blacheville, Listolier, and Fameuil formed a sort of group of which Tholomyès was the head. He was the wit of the company.

Tholomyès was an old student of the old style; he was rich, having an income of four thousand francs—a splendid scandal on the Montagne Sainte-Geneviève. He was a good liver, thirty years old and ill preserved. He was wrinkled, his teeth were broken, and he was beginning to show signs of baldness, of which he said, gaily: “The head at thirty, the knees at forty.” His digestion was not good, and he had a weeping eye. But in proportion as his youth died out, his gaiety increased; he replaced his teeth by jests, his hair by joy, his health by irony, and his weeping eye was always laughing. He was dilapidated, but covered with flowers. His youth, decamping long before its time, was beating a retreat in good order, bursting with laughter and everyone was fooled. He had had a play refused by the Vaudeville; he wrote poems now and then on any subject; moreover, he expressed skepticism about everything with a superior air—a great strength in the eyes of the weak. So, being bald and ironical, he was the leader. Can the word iron be the root from which irony is derived?‡

One day, Tholomyès took the other three aside, and said to them with an oracular gesture:

“For nearly a year, Fantine, Dahlia, Zéphine, and Favourite have been asking us to give them a surprise; we have solemnly promised them one. They are constantly reminding us of it, me especially. Just as the old women at Naples cry to Saint January, ‘Faccia gialluta, fa o miracolo, yellow face, do your miracle,’ our pretty ones are always saying: ‘Tholomyès, when are you going to give birth to your surprise?’ At the same time, our parents are asking us to come visit. It’s a bore on both sides. It seems to me the time has come. Let us talk it over.”

Upon this, Tholomyès lowered his voice, and mysteriously articulated something so ludicrous that a prolonged and enthusiastic sniggering arose from the four throats at once, and Blacheville exclaimed: “What an idea!”

An ale-house, filled with smoke, was before them; they entered and the rest of their conference was lost in its shadows.

The result of this mystery was a brilliant pleasure party, which took place on the following Sunday, the four young men inviting the four young girls.

3

FOUR TO FOUR

IT IS DIFFICULT to picture to oneself, today, a country outing of students and grisettes as it was forty-five years ago. Paris has no longer the same environs; the aspect of what we might call circum-Parisian life has completely changed in half a century; in place of the crude, one-horse chaise, we have now