Les Miserables Volume 1 Fantine, BOOK FOURTH.--TO CONFIDE IS SOMETIMES TO DELIVER INTO A PERSON'S POWER CHAPTER II FIRST SKETCH OF TWO UNPREPOSSESSING FIGURES

Description

• Author: Victor Hugo

The mouse which had been caught was a pitiful specimen; but the cat rejoices even over a lean mouse.

Who were these Thenardiers?

Let us say a word or two of them now. We will complete the sketch later on.

These beings belonged to that bastard class composed of coarse people who have been successful, and of intelligent people who have descended in the scale, which is between the class called "middle" and the class denominated as "inferior," and which combines some of the defects of the second with nearly all the vices of the first, without possessing the generous impulse of the workingman nor the honest order of the bourgeois.

They were of those dwarfed natures which, if a dull fire chances to warm them up, easily become monstrous. There was in the woman a substratum of the brute, and in the man the material for a blackguard. Both were susceptible, in the highest degree, of the sort of hideous progress which is accomplished in the direction of evil. There exist crab-like souls which are continually retreating towards the darkness, retrograding in life rather than advancing, employing experience to augment their deformity, growing incessantly worse, and becoming more and more impregnated with an ever-augmenting blackness. This man and woman possessed such souls.

Thenardier, in particular, was troublesome for a physiognomist. One can only look at some men to distrust them; for one feels that they are dark in both directions. They are uneasy in the rear and threatening in front. There is something of the unknown about them. One can no more answer for what they have done than for what they will do. The shadow which they bear in their glance denounces them. From merely hearing them utter a word or seeing them make a gesture, one obtains a glimpse of sombre secrets in their past and of sombre mysteries in their future.

This Thenardier, if he himself was to be believed, had been a soldier-- a sergeant, he said. He had probably been through the campaign of 1815, and had even conducted himself with tolerable valor, it would seem. We shall see later on how much truth there was in this. The sign of his hostelry was in allusion to one of his feats of arms. He had painted it himself; for he knew how to do a little of everything, and badly.

It was at the epoch when the ancient classical romance which, after having been Clelie, was no longer anything but Lodoiska, still noble, but ever more and more vulgar, having fallen from Mademoiselle de Scuderi to Madame Bournon-Malarme, and from Madame de Lafayette to Madame Barthelemy-Hadot, was setting the loving hearts of the portresses of Paris aflame, and even ravaging the suburbs to some extent. Madame Thenardier was just intelligent enough to read this sort of books. She lived on them. In them she drowned what brains she possessed. This had given her, when very young, and even a little later, a sort of pensive attitude towards her husband, a scamp of a certain depth, a ruffian lettered to the extent of the grammar, coarse and fine at one and the same time, but, so far as sentimentalism was concerned, given to the perusal of Pigault-Lebrun, and "in what concerns the sex," as he said in his jargon--a downright, unmitigated lout. His wife was twelve or fifteen years younger than he was. Later on, when her hair, arranged in a romantically drooping fashion, began to grow gray, when the Magaera began to be developed from the Pamela, the female Thenardier was nothing but a coarse, vicious woman, who had dabbled in stupid romances. Now, one cannot read nonsense with impunity. The result was that her eldest daughter was named Eponine; as for the younger, the poor little thing came near being called Gulnare; I know not to what diversion, effected by a romance of Ducray-Dumenil, she owed the fact that she merely bore the name of Azelma.

However, we will remark by the way, everything was not ridiculous and superficial in that curious epoch to which we are alluding, and which may be designated as the anarchy of baptismal names. By the side of this romantic element which we have just indicated there is the social symptom. It is not rare for the neatherd's boy nowadays to bear the name of Arthur, Alfred, or Alphonse, and for the vicomte--if there are still any vicomtes--to be called Thomas, Pierre, or Jacques. This displacement, which places the "elegant" name on the plebeian and the rustic name on the aristocrat, is nothing else than an eddy of equality. The irresistible penetration of the new inspiration is there as everywhere else. Beneath this apparent discord there is a great and a profound thing,-- the French Revolution.

Disclaimer:
Contents of this page are indexed from the Internet. All actions are under your responsability. Email us to report illegal contents or external links and we'll remove them immediately.

Please check the description for download links if any or do a search to find alternative books.

Can't Download?
Please search mirrors if you can't find download links for "Les Miserables Volume 1 Fantine, BOOK FOURTH.--TO CONFIDE IS SOMETIMES TO DELIVER INTO A PERSON'S POWER CHAPTER II FIRST SKETCH OF TWO UNPREPOSSESSING FIGURES" in "Description" and someone else may update the links. Check the comments when back to find any updates.

Search Mirrors
Maybe some mirror pages will be helpful, search this book at top of this page or click here to find more info.

1. Ebooks list page : 92
2. Les Miserables Volume 1 Fantine, BOOK FOURTH.--TO CONFIDE IS SOMETIMES TO DELIVER INTO A PERSON'S POWER CHAPTER III THE LARK
3. Les Miserables Volume 1 Fantine, BOOK FOURTH.--TO CONFIDE IS SOMETIMES TO DELIVER INTO A PERSON'S POWER CHAPTER I ONE MOTHER MEETS ANOTHER MOTHER
4. Les Miserables Volume 1 Fantine, BOOK THIRD.--IN THE YEAR 1817 CHAPTER VI A Les Miserables Volume 1 Fantine, BOOK THIRD.--IN THE YEAR 1817 CHAPTER IN WHICH THEY ADORE EACH OTHER
5. Les Miserables Volume 1 Fantine, BOOK EIGHTH.--A COUNTER-BLOW CHAPTER II FANTINE HAPPY
6. Les Miserables Volume 1 Fantine, BOOK SECOND.--THE FALL CHAPTER XI WHAT HE DOES
7. Les Miserables Volume 1 Fantine, BOOK FIRST.--A JUST MAN CHAPTER I M. MYRIEL
8. Les Miserables Volume 1 Fantine, BOOK FIRST.--A JUST MAN CHAPTER II M. MYRIEL BECOMES M. WELCOME
9. Les Miserables Volume 1 Fantine, BOOK FIRST.--A JUST MAN CHAPTER VII CRAVATTE
10. Les Miserables Volume 1 Fantine, BOOK FIRST.--A JUST MAN CHAPTER XIV WHAT HE THOUGHT
11. Les Miserables Volume 1 Fantine, BOOK FIRST.--A JUST MAN CHAPTER XI A RESTRICTION
12. Les Miserables Volume 1 Fantine, BOOK SECOND.--THE FALL CHAPTER IX NEW TROUBLES
13. Les Miserables Volume 1 Fantine, BOOK FIRST.--A JUST MAN CHAPTER XIII WHAT HE BELIEVED
14. Les Miserables Volume 1 Fantine, BOOK SECOND.--THE FALL CHAPTER V TRANQUILLITY
15. Les Miserables Volume 1 Fantine, BOOK FIRST.--A JUST MAN CHAPTER IV WORKS CORRESPONDING TO WORDS
16. Les Miserables Volume 1 Fantine, BOOK THIRD.--IN THE YEAR 1817 CHAPTER III FOUR AND FOUR