THE PROMISE TO THE DEAD FULFILLED.
CHAPTER I.
THE WATER QUESTION AT MONTFERMEIL.
Montfermeil is situated between Livry and Chelles, on the southern slope of the lofty plateau which separates the Ourque from the Marne. At the present day it is a rather large place, adorned with stucco villas all the year round, and with holiday-making cits on Sunday. In 1823 there were neither so many white houses nor so many happy cits as there are now, and it was merely a village in the woods. A visitor certainly came across here and there a few country-houses of the last century, recognizable by their air of pretension, their balconies of twisted iron, and the tall windows, in which the little squares produce all sorts of green hues on the white of the closed shutters. But Montfermeil was not the less a village; retired cloth-dealers and persons 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 there cheaply that peasant life which is so tranquil and abundant. The only thing 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 village which was on the Gagny side obtained its water from the splendid ponds in the forest there; but the other end, which surrounds the church and is on the Chelles side, could only obtain drinking-water from a little spring about a quarter of an hour's walk from Montfermeil, near the road to Chelles; laying in water was therefore a hard task for every family. The large houses and the aristocracy, among which Thénardier's pot-house may be reckoned, paid a liard a bucket to a man whose trade it was, and who earned by it about eight sous a day. But this man only worked till seven P.M. in summer, and till five in winter; and once night had set in and the ground-floor shutters were closed, any person who 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 have forgotten, little Cosette. It will be remembered that Cosette was useful to the Thénardiers in two ways,—they made the mother pay and the child act as servant. Hence when the mother ceased payment, for the reason which we know, the Thénardiers kept Cosette, who took the place of a servant. In this quality she had to fetch water when it was wanted, and the child, terrified at the idea of going to the spring at night, was very careful that the house should never be without water. Christmas of 1823 was peculiarly brilliant at Montfermeil; the beginning of the winter was mild, and there had been neither snow nor frost. Some mountebanks, who came from Paris, had obtained leave from the mayor to erect their booth in the village high street, and a party 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, joyous life in this quiet little place. As a faithful historian we are bound to add that among the curiosities displayed in the market-place was a menagerie, in which some ragged fellows showed the peasants of Montfermeil one of those terrific Brazilian vultures of which the Paris Museum did not possess a specimen till 1845, and which have a tricolor cockade for an eye. Naturalists, I believe, call this bird Caracara Polyborus; it belongs to the Apicide order and the vulture family. A few old Bonapartist soldiers living in the village went to see this bird with devotion, and the mountebanks declared that the tricolor cockade was a unique phenomenon, and expressly produced by Nature for their menagerie.
On the Christmas evening several carters and hawkers were sitting to drink, round four or five candles, in Thénardier's tap-room. This room was like those usually found in pot-houses; there were tables, pewter pots, bottles, drinkers, and smokers, but little light, and a good deal of uproar. The date of the year was, however, indicated by the two objects, fashionable at that time among tradespeople, and which were on a table,—a kaleidoscope and a lamp of clouded tin. Madame Thénardier was watching the supper, which was roasting before a bright clear fire, while her husband was drinking with his guests and talking politics. In addition to the political remarks, which mainly referred to the Spanish war and the Duc d'Angoulême, local parentheses like the following 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 grapes were very juicy when put under the press."—"But the grapes could not 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 poor wine?"—"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 of small seeds, which we can't waste time in sifting, and which must pass under the mill-stones; such as tares, lucern, cockles, vetches, amaranths, hemp-seed, and a number of other weeds, without counting the pebbles which are so frequent in some sorts of wheat, especially Breton wheat. I don't like grinding Breton wheat, any more than sawyers like sawing beams in which there are nails. You can fancy the bad dust all this makes in the hopper, and then people complain unfairly of the flour, for it is no fault of ours."
Between two windows a mower seated at a table with a farmer, who was making a bargain to have a field mown in spring, said,—
"There is no harm in the grass being damp, for it cuts better. But your grass is tender, and hard to cut, sir, for it is so young, and bends before the scythe," etc. etc.
Cosette was seated at her usual place, the cross-bar of the table, near the chimney; she was in rags, her bare feet were thrust into wooden shoes, and she was knitting, by the fire-light, stockings intended for the young Thénardiers. Two merry children could be heard laughing and prattling in an adjoining room; they were Éponine and Azelma. A cat-o'-nine-tails hung from a nail by the side of the chimney. At times, the cry of a baby somewhere in the house was audible through the noise of the tap-room; it was a little boy Madame Thénardier had given birth to one winter, "without knowing how," she used to say, "it was the 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 became too troublesome, Thénardier would say,—"There's your brat squalling; go and see what he wants." "Bah!" the mother would answer, "he's a nuisance;" and the poor deserted little wretch would continue to cry in the darkness.