CHAPTER I--THE WATER QUESTION AT MONTFERMEIL

  Montfermeil is situated between Livry and Chelles, on the southern edgeof that lofty table-land which separates the Ourcq from the Marne. Atthe present day it is a tolerably large town, ornamented all the yearthrough with plaster villas, and on Sundays with beaming bourgeois. In1823 there were at Montfermeil neither so many white houses nor somany well-satisfied citizens: it was only a village in the forest. Somepleasure-houses of the last century were to be met with there, to besure, which were recognizable by their grand air, their balconies intwisted iron, and their long windows, whose tiny panes cast all sortsof varying shades of green on the white of the closed shutters; butMontfermeil was none the less a village. Retired cloth-merchants andrusticating attorneys had not discovered it as yet; it was a peacefuland charming place, which was not on the road to anywhere: there peoplelived, and cheaply, that peasant rustic life which is so bounteous andso easy; only, water was rare there, on account of the elevation of theplateau.

  It was necessary to fetch it from a considerable distance; the end ofthe village towards Gagny drew its water from the magnificent pondswhich exist in the woods there. The other end, which surrounds thechurch and which lies in the direction of Chelles, found drinking-wateronly at a little spring half-way down the slope, near the road toChelles, about a quarter of an hour from Montfermeil.

  Thus each household found it hard work to keep supplied with water. Thelarge houses, the aristocracy, of which the Thénardier tavern formed apart, paid half a farthing a bucketful to a man who made a business ofit, and who earned about eight sous a day in his enterprise of supplyingMontfermeil with water; but this good man only worked until seveno'clock in the evening in summer, and five in winter; and night oncecome and the shutters on the ground floor once closed, he who had nowater to drink went to fetch it for himself or did without it.

  This constituted the terror of the poor creature whom the reader hasprobably not forgotten,--little Cosette. It will be remembered thatCosette was useful to the Thénardiers in two ways: they made the motherpay them, and they made the child serve them. So when the mother ceasedto pay altogether, the reason for which we have read in precedingchapters, the Thénardiers kept Cosette. She took the place of a servantin their house. In this capacity she it was who ran to fetch water whenit was required. So the child, who was greatly terrified at the idea ofgoing to the spring at night, took great care that water should never belacking in the house.

  Christmas of the year 1823 was particularly brilliant at Montfermeil.The beginning of the winter had been mild; there had been neither snownor frost up to that time. Some mountebanks from Paris had obtainedpermission of the mayor to erect their booths in the principal street ofthe village, and a band of itinerant merchants, under protection of thesame tolerance, had constructed their stalls on the Church Square,and even extended them into Boulanger Alley, where, as the reader willperhaps remember, the Thénardiers' hostelry was situated. These peoplefilled the inns and drinking-shops, and communicated to that tranquillittle district a noisy and joyous life. In order to play the part ofa faithful historian, we ought even to add that, among the curiositiesdisplayed in the square, there was a menagerie, in which frightfulclowns, clad in rags and coming no one knew whence, exhibited tothe peasants of Montfermeil in 1823 one of those horrible Brazilianvultures, such as our Royal Museum did not possess until 1845, and whichhave a tricolored cockade for an eye. I believe that naturalists callthis bird Caracara Polyborus; it belongs to the order of the Apicides,and to the family of the vultures. Some good old Bonapartist soldiers,who had retired to the village, went to see this creature with greatdevotion. The mountebanks gave out that the tricolored cockade was aunique phenomenon made by God expressly for their menagerie.

  On Christmas eve itself, a number of men, carters, and peddlers, wereseated at table, drinking and smoking around four or five candles inthe public room of Thénardier's hostelry. This room resembled alldrinking-shop rooms,--tables, pewter jugs, bottles, drinkers, smokers;but little light and a great deal of noise. The date of the year 1823was indicated, nevertheless, by two objects which were then fashionablein the bourgeois class: to wit, a kaleidoscope and a lamp of ribbed tin.The female Thénardier was attending to the supper, which was roasting infront of a clear fire; her husband was drinking with his customers andtalking politics.

  Besides political conversations which had for their principal subjectsthe Spanish war and M. le Duc d'Angoulême, strictly local parentheses,like the following, were audible amid the uproar:--

  "About Nanterre and Suresnes the vines have flourished greatly. Whenten pieces were reckoned on there have been twelve. They have yielded agreat deal of juice under the press." "But the grapes cannot be ripe?""In those parts the grapes should not be ripe; the wine turns oily assoon as spring comes." "Then it is very thin wine?" "There are winespoorer even than these. The grapes must be gathered while green." Etc.

  Or a miller would call out:--

  "Are we responsible for what is in the sacks? We find in them a quantityof small seed which we cannot sift out, and which we are obliged to sendthrough the mill-stones; there are tares, fennel, vetches, hempseed,fox-tail, and a host of other weeds, not to mention pebbles, whichabound in certain wheat, especially in Breton wheat. I am not fond ofgrinding Breton wheat, any more than long-sawyers like to saw beams withnails in them. You can judge of the bad dust that makes in grinding. Andthen people complain of the flour. They are in the wrong. The flour isno fault of ours."

  In a space between two windows a mower, who was seated at table with alanded proprietor who was fixing on a price for some meadow work to beperformed in the spring, was saying:--

  "It does no harm to have the grass wet. It cuts better. Dew is a goodthing, sir. It makes no difference with that grass. Your grass is youngand very hard to cut still. It's terribly tender. It yields before theiron." Etc.

  Cosette was in her usual place, seated on the cross-bar of the kitchentable near the chimney. She was in rags; her bare feet were thrust intowooden shoes, and by the firelight she was engaged in knitting woollenstockings destined for the young Thénardiers. A very young kitten wasplaying about among the chairs. Laughter and chatter were audible inthe adjoining room, from two fresh children's voices: it was Éponine andAzelma.

  In the chimney-corner a cat-o'-nine-tails was hanging on a nail.

  At intervals the cry of a very young child, which was somewhere in thehouse, rang through the noise of the dram-shop. It was a little boywho had been born to the Thénardiers during one of the precedingwinters,--"she did not know why," she said, "the result of thecold,"--and who was a little more than three years old. The mother hadnursed him, but she did not love him. When the persistent clamor of thebrat became too annoying, "Your son is squalling," Thénardier wouldsay; "do go and see what he wants." "Bah!" the mother would reply, "hebothers me." And the neglected child continued to shriek in the dark.