登陆注册
12107900000061

第61章 PART ONE(60)

People arrange such departures tranquilly;but they are despairs!

A neighbor of the Thenardiers met this mother as she was setting out,and came back with the remark:——

'I have just seen a woman crying in the street so that it was enough to rend your heart.'

When Cosette's mother had taken her departure,the man said to the woman:——

'That will serve to pay my note for one hundred and ten francs which falls due to-morrow;I lacked fifty francs.

Do you know that I should have had a bailiff and a protest after me?You played the mouse-trap nicely with your young ones.'

'Without suspecting it,'said the woman.

BOOK FOURTH.——TO CONFIDE IS SOMETIMES TO DELIVER INTO A PERSON'S POWER

Ⅱ FIRST SKETCH OF TWO UNPREPOSSESSING FIGURES

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.

BOOK FOURTH.——TO CONFIDE IS SOMETIMES TO DELIVER INTO A PERSON'S POWER

Ⅲ It is not all in all sufficient to be wicked in order to prosper.The cook-shop was in a bad way.

Thanks to the traveller's fifty-seven francs,Thenardier had been able to avoid a protest and to honor his signature.

On the following month they were again in need of money.

The woman took Cosette's outfit to Paris,and pawned it at the pawnbroker's for sixty francs.As soon as that sum was spent,the Thenardiers grew accustomed to look on the little girl merely as a child whom they were caring for out of charity;and they treated her accordingly.

同类推荐
热门推荐
  • 相思谋:妃常难娶

    相思谋:妃常难娶

    某日某王府张灯结彩,婚礼进行时,突然不知从哪冒出来一个小孩,对着新郎道:“爹爹,今天您的大婚之喜,娘亲让我来还一样东西。”说完提着手中的玉佩在新郎面前晃悠。此话一出,一府宾客哗然,然当大家看清这小孩与新郎如一个模子刻出来的面容时,顿时石化。此时某屋顶,一个绝色女子不耐烦的声音响起:“儿子,事情办完了我们走,别在那磨矶,耽误时间。”新郎一看屋顶上的女子,当下怒火攻心,扔下新娘就往女子所在的方向扑去,吼道:“女人,你给本王站住。”一场爱与被爱的追逐正式开始、、、、、、、
  • 藏仙楼

    藏仙楼

    天有九重。一重:雷罚云渺。二重:星蕴道妙。三重:日追月逐。四重:天府轮回。五重:断天绝地。六重:灵神禅吟。七重:仙神笙箫。八重:原始天界。九重:本源天道。
  • 陈家鬼决

    陈家鬼决

    一本家族传下的书,让陈晓峰走上了捉鬼之路。经过千奇百怪的鬼,丧尸、妖怪的洗礼而变得越来越强大。本书具备了惊悚、恐怖、言情、修仙、神话等元素,让小M带领着诸位,一起目睹陈晓峰的成长!
  • 少女的恋爱故事

    少女的恋爱故事

    这是一个来自地狱的少女的恋爱故事。柯南同人,cp灰原哀。注:案件时间没有按原来的写。
  • 杨柳青小志

    杨柳青小志

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。
  • 战骋九天

    战骋九天

    在大陆西侧有着一个叫做罗云的帝国,故事便从这里开始,,而作为帝国四大家族之一的韩家的后代韩筱亚,却没有能力修炼斗气,便被其他家族的后代欺辱,最后誓下决心要去复仇,后来在碧岚云府发生了一些事情,而韩筱亚的人生也发生了转折。在大陆上举办的强者为尊的武道大会之上获得冠军而得,后来家族惨遭灭门,与大陆四大宗门之一为敌,从战者战师大战师战灵战魂战王战皇战尊战帝一步一步向强者之路攀登,最终挑战四大宗门,而后又牵扯出一个神秘组织…………想要具体知道,那就请看这本书吧。
  • 艾伦的世界

    艾伦的世界

    2222年,人类回到了石器时代,一切文明消失于世。相传在两百多年前,一台拥有自主意识的超级电脑爆发了一场惨绝人寰的信息病毒。没有人知道那是如何发生的。古书中甚至记载,得到这台电脑之人便能掌控整个世界............
  • 法宝:宁夏“继续解放思想推进跨越式发展”研讨文集

    法宝:宁夏“继续解放思想推进跨越式发展”研讨文集

    明确提出,要“继续解放思想,坚持改革开放,推动科学发展,促进社会和谐”,要“勇于变革、勇于创新,永不僵化、永不停滞,不为任何风险所惧,不被任何干扰所惑。”思想上的不断解放,观念上的不断创新,实践上的不断开拓,使中国特色社会主义事业进入了欣欣向荣的新阶段。
  • EXO之吴世勋迟来的爱

    EXO之吴世勋迟来的爱

    璇,你回来好吗?我错了,我想你了,算我求你了,你回来吧。BY吴世勋璇儿,你知道吗?当我知道我是你亲生哥哥有多痛,算我求你回来吧。我们大家都等着你回来。BY鹿晗小璇,我知道你喜欢是我弟弟,,算我求你了,回来吧,我永远是你蓝颜。BY吴亦凡汐璇我不会在让他伤害你,即使你喜欢的不是我。BY朴灿烈冷汐璇你好狠的心,为什么要一声不吭的离开,你的离开要我们悔恨一辈子吗?BY边伯贤言(璇),我不管你是否跟吴世勋有婚约,我永远都不会放弃你的。BY张艺兴
  • 虹杀手之赤燕

    虹杀手之赤燕

    她,不是一个普通的小女孩,而是大名鼎鼎的虹组织的1号杀手,赤燕,她一直以为自己是一个孤儿,可天生的杀手能力让她对自己的身世产生的疑惑,她究竟是谁;北冥国是神州大陆北方的一个大国,这里是北方的中心,曾经的北方天堂,如今却一步步的走向未知的将来,这个国家将何去何从,而北方七国的结局又是生存还是毁灭;