(Note: First Les Miserables fanfiction! So please don't kill me if some of this isn't as perfect as what I expected it to be. Once again, apologies if some facts are a little twisted…too lazy to re-read the book. 'neways, read/review! No flames!)
I always admire him from afar. You know, the dashing young man who always sits on the curb on the road with a fan in his hands, stitching. Sometimes I walk past him and peep at what he's doing. He's a fan maker and his hands are always busy with needles or brushes, painting and stitching the most beautiful things. He's always out there, doing the same thing, again and again; until late at night when all the lamps are lit and the gangsters come out. Sometime he's at the Café Musain or at a dirty wine shop called Corinthe, where he is always with eight other young men, speaking animatedly about politics and life. They always talk in hushed voices when the topic of Bonaparte and politics arise and I cannot hear what they're talking about.
His name is Feuilly; he's a fan maker, as I told you before. Someone told me that he makes, at the very most, three francs a day. It pains my heart to hear that, really. Yesterday, I decided to go and buy some fans from him. I bought one with poetry and another with the scene of a forest. The poetry was wonderful! It was talking about the poor and how abused they are. I asked if he wrote it and he shook his head, telling me that a man named Jean Prouvaire wrote it and gave it to him. I wonder if this Jean Prouvaire is one of the men who sits with him at the café and wine shop. I tried to talk to him but he seems busy. You see, he doesn't make much and the fans are extremely cheap…ten sous for one. No wonder he is poor and his clothes have patches in them.
He's rather good-looking with dark hair that's almost black, but in the good light you can see specks of brown here and there. His skin's rather pale with a few noticeable cuts here and there, probably from the hard rubble he lives with and his rowdy brothers. He had bright grey eyes; they were so bright that one would almost forget about the bags underneath his eyes. He must have worked late hours and extra jobs, judging form his expressions. His face was always drawn with some air of depression, even when he was happy. His clothes also seemed to give off a strange impression of the forlorn. He always wore a shabby yet clean shirt with a black cravat, a patchy waistcoat and a pair of black pants that had a few dark gray patches on it, sewed with the utmost care. He had a pitiful charm around him, like a puppy…
I must admit I was and am smitten with him.
It feels like it's been years since June 6th, 1832…the end of the revolution and the death of Feuilly. He was killed, you see, when a bayonet stabbed him in the chest, along with the rest of the revolutionary students. The National Guard was behind this! Feuilly was a revolutionary student who wanted to change the world and, yet, he died in the fight for it. The eight other men who talked and ate with him were also students too, led by one man named Enjolras, who is dashingly handsome yet so appalling. He was the last person to be killed—no, another man was—he offered his body to them, he knew the revolution was over.
Their group's name was Les Amis de l'ABC, a clever trick, The Friends of the Abased, and they were all university students, most of them studying in law and medicine. All except for Feuilly, he was too poor to go to a real university. I happened to meet with one of the Amis before the barricade incident (I recognized him as the one with the pocket mirror and sped right up to him), his name was Joly, a doctor-in-training and a rather charming fellow—all of the Amis seem to be rather dashing in their own way, all except for the greasy young man with a bottle of absinthe in his hands. He told me that Feuilly had taught himself to read and write, loves foreign countries and lives with three younger brothers he has to support in a tiny apartment in the poorer side of Paris. I feel quite sorry for him!
I suppose I'll never forget the man who sat at the curb of the road, sewing and painting. He'll always be there. He was and is there, on the curb.