A/N: Another strange take on the life of a Les Amis. This time, it's dear Feuilly. Excuse the rushed-ness of this… once again, the story idea came to me at 2 in the morning
Marc Feuilly enters the Café Musain with a harried, rather harassed, expression upon his pale face. Only a few fans were bought from him, and from grisettes to boot. In his pockets was two francs and thirteen sous, not enough to pay the rent, but enough to pay for a filling meal if he finds the right place. It was good enough for Marc, who does not expect much anymore.
Anymore.
It is a strange word. Just a simple word that, if put at the end of a sad sentence, can change the meaning entirely. This is where the reader will usually ask about Marc Feuilly's past: what happened to him? Why is he in the pitiful state that he is in now? Well, I could tell you, but you would be too sad, right? Here, I will take the tone of one Lemony Snicket and tell the reader to simply turn back.
You have been warned.
Marc-Charles Louis Apollinaire Feuilly was born in Nantes, France, to Arnaud and Marthe Feuilly. They were very respectable people, as well as very wealthy. The three of them lived in a large house just outside the bustling city, with many servants and antiques gracing their house. Arnaud was a famous lawyer, you see, and many people came to him to seek legal advice, so the house was always full of decent people in nice clothing. Marc-Charles always admired beautiful clothing.
The three lived very happily together. Marthe played the piano from time to time, so on occasion the house would be filled with loveable etudes. Everything was very happy, to sum it all up, and both adults spoiled their only son incessantly. Instead of educating him in the real world, like taking him out to see important people, they gave him expensive paint sets and allowed him to draw all over the place, even on walls if they weren't looking. None of the serving staff was ever allowed to scold Marc-Charles, not even Clothilde, his nanny.
When he first picked up the horsehair brush, his parents knew he had a talent. His first real drawing was that of his mother wearing a blue dress and pearls. Though he was really no prodigy, he was so talented for a child of four that Marthe began to weep tears of joy. Arnaud did not say anything about Bohemianism when Marc-Charles drew a portrait of him in a smart suit.
That's right… everything seemed so happy until the cholera attack of 1811. One of the maids forgot to properly boil the water, so the disease attacked Marthe and Arnaud Feuilly before they even knew. They both thought they, quite away from the city, would be safe and felt no harm in staying where they were. But both of them died in a short period of time, leaving poor Marc-Charles Louis Apollinaire Feuilly as the heir to the considerable Feuilly fortune.
Anatole Feuilly was Arnaud's younger brother, less successful but more ambitious than Arnaud. He lived in Saint-Étienne with his wife, Ernestine, and his two children, Edwidge and Constance. Anatole was a lawyer as well but he wasn't as well-known because of his drinking tendencies. No one wanted an inebriated barrister to represent them.
At the funeral Anatole kindly took Marc-Charles under his wing, with an evil glint in his eye. Everyone smiled with admiration as Anatole agreed to take care of his nephew like one of his own children, but he would need the Feuilly fortune to go under his name. No one asked why. Money wasn't to be trusted to a five year old with a paintbrush in hand.
In Saint-Étienne, Anatole wasted no time in stripping Marc-Charles from his money. He needed the francs to pay off a huge gambling debt he collected on a trip to a Parisian casino. Marc-Charles didn't care, of course, because money has no value to a naïve boy of five.
You would expect that Marc-Charles was abused. But he wasn't. He was treated kindly because he was family, and he was the son of the Rich and Respected Arnaud Feuilly. He got along well with Edwidge (but not so much with Constance because he didn't like dolls). He did not receive a proper education though, that was reserved for the two "real" children, so he taught himself how to read and write through the nursery books in Edwidge's library. His favourite rhyme was something that began with 'Ah! Vous Dirai-Je, Maman". But he really couldn't remember.
One day, when he was eleven, he heard Anatole telling his friend that Arnaud's fortune had run out. He decided that he did not want Marc-Charles to stay because he "ate up the resources". He would send him to a good orphanage near-by where he would learn about proper adult life.
But Marc-Charles did not want that. After much consideration, he decided to run away with nothing but the paint set he had, the clothes on his back and twenty francs hidden in the first book he could find, a political study.
His plan didn't quite work, though, and he was sent to a Parisian orphanage.
He still painted out of sadness, especially after an ugly gamin stole his twenty francs. He decided that it would be his profession, painting; he would paint fans because he remembered how much his mother loved fans.
Marc-Charles had no apprenticeship. He learned everything himself: politics, love through the grisettes, art… He was fond of Poland, of all things, because Poland had been pushed around from country to country (or so he heard), and he related that to his own life.
Very soon, when he was seventeen, he was forced to leave the orphanage to find his own life. His fans were his only source of income because his writing was not fit for a job that required much writing, like accounting, and he was not smart enough to seek out a relative for help. As much as he knew, Anatole was dead.
That was when he met Olivier Combeferre, a kind yet somewhat lofty student who mistook him for a beggar crouching on the streets. After a few hasty apologies, they became good friends when Olivier spotted the political book in Marc-Charles's hands.
"What's your name?" the student asked.
"Marc—"
Olivier cut him off. "Oh? Marc, then? Lovely name. I should ask you about the book you are holding…"
That was how Marc-Charles became simply 'Marc'. He liked Olivier too much to correct him and when he was introduced to the Olivier's friends, he was Marc. Marc Feuilly now. Never Marc-Charles Louis Apollinaire Feuilly of Nantes.
A/N: Well? What'd you think? Tell me if I should write more of this stuff! D