Les Misérables
Isabella / Demetri Volturi
Rated M for a Reason
Bella IS Éponine. My recreation of the tale of Les Misérables, with elements of Twilight mixed in.
Even if you don't know the storyline of Les Misérables, you can understand it through here. I will explain the basics through this story.
Enjoy, this combines elements of the novel and musical of Les Misérables.
~ France, 1815 ~
Jean Valjean was an honorable man. His mother and father had both died when he was young, leaving Jean Valjean with the only family he had left, an older sister who was a widow with seven children. She was the one to bring up her younger brother, until her husband had died. Her eldest child was only eight, the youngest was one.
Jean was 25 at the time of his brother in law's death, so he took responsibility. He worked to support his sister and her children, and he did his job diligently. He never had time for silly things such as love.
He spent his days in weariness, and his food would always be split up to go to the hungered children. Throughout the seasons, he would have numerous jobs, but one winter there was no bread left for the family.
Jean Valjean took action, an action that would severely change his life as he knew it.
The baker down the road jolted up at the smashing sound at the dead of the night. He cautiously made his way to the kitchen, where he saw an arm making its way through the glass. The baker followed the thief in haste, and managed to catch up to him. The thief was Jean Valjean, who only wanted to feed his sister's family.
Jean Valjean was taken away for his theft and break in. He was put on trial, and was found guilty, so he was sentenced five years into the galleys.
A year later, a gang of galley slaves was put into chains after the 1796 victory of Montenotte, won by the chief in command of the Italian army. Jean Valjean was one of the imprisoned slaves, and he was taken away to nearby Toulon, and spent 27 days on a cart, a chain on his neck, showing his slavery.
When he arrived to Touson, he was given a red cassock. He was no longer Jean Valjean, no, he was slave number 24601. A man with no honor, and dignity. He lived the life of the slave now, for nineteen years in imprisonment. He spent his days wondering if his sister and her children were out on the streets, starving to death back home.
It was years later when he heard whispers about his beloved sister. It was rumored she lived on one of the poorest streets of Paris, but she only had her youngest child with her. At the end of his fourth year, Jean escaped from captivity, but he was caught, and condemned another 19 years after a series of events.
That was in 1795, now it has been exactly nineteen years since that event occurred.
It was an average day, and the slaves were ordered to pull in a ship of goods. There were no winds to guide it to shore, so now the slaves must do their duty.
Jean Valjean went to do his duty numbly, and he cringed at the cool waters of the river. The cries of the slaves echoed through the channel of water as they pulled the ropes attached to the ship. Valjean could barely feel his arms as he robotically pulled at the ropes.
"Look down. Don't look 'em in the eye. Look down, look down. You'll always be a slave!" The slaves' eerie cries echoed throughout the channel, and Jean looks up. He saw an inspector in blue watching them, but he didn't care anymore. Jean felt like his duty was never going too finished at this rate.
"The sun is strong. It's as hot as hell below." A slave commented from the side, and many nodded their agreement.
"Look down, look down, there's twenty years to go…." Another slave said, with his tone angry and mournful as he pulled the ropes angrily.
"I've done no wrong! Sweet Jesus, hear my prayer!" Another slave cried out, and blood was pouring from his hands. Tears streamed down his face, no doubt from the salt water.
"Look down look down, sweet Jesus doesn't care." Another slave reprimanded him as he continued to pull determinedly at the ropes.
"How long, oh Lord…Before you let me die?" A slave moaned from his spot after the ship was pulled in. The slaves lined up to go to their lodging, which was filthy and rat infested.
As Jean Valjean was about to enter it, the guard in blue stopped him.
"Go get the flag." Was all he said as he watched the lone slave's shoulders slump. Jean went and lifted the huge pole; French flag attached, and dragged it to the man.
He dropped at his feet, and the man eyed with distaste.
"Prisoner 24601, your time is up, and your parole has begun. You know what this means." He stated, his hands clasped behind his back.
"Yes, it means I'm free!" Jean Valjean exclaimed with excitement. He was finally going to escape this hell!
"No! It means you get your yellow ticket-of-leave. You are a thief!" The guard stated as he pulled out a piece of paper, it had Jean Valjean's true identity and records written on it in French.
"I stole a loaf of bread!" Jean protested, his eyes narrowed in anger.
"You robbed a house!" The guard retorted, it was evident he respected the law greatly.
"I broke a window pane. My sister's children were close to death, and we were all starving!" Jean protested once more, trying to clear his actions. But the guard wouldn't take any of it.
"And you will starve again, unless you learn the meaning of the law."
"I know the meaning of those 19 years a slave of the law!" Jean yelled, angered that his sister's children had to suffer all of these years.
"Five years for what you did, the rest because you tried to run. Yes, 24601."
"My name is Jean Valjean." Jean said, as he prepared to leave the damned once more.
"And I am Javert! Do not forget my name, 24601." Javert called after him, and eyed him as he left. He was sure that this man was going to be the source of many problems in the future.
Jean Valjean tasted the freedom on his lips. It felt so good, something he would savor.
But that little yellow paper prevented him from ever gaining a job, so he had to become a thief within the night time.
As he wandered the streets, jobless and homeless, a kind man let him in. He was a Bishop, of the religion of Christianity. He fed Valjean, and gave him a place to stay. Jean took this offer, but committed a sin almost immediately that night. He took all the silver he could carry, and fled the scene, where the bishop had lived.
The next day, he found himself on his knees in front of the bishop, armed forces behind him. A wound on the side of his head was bleeding, and the blood dripped to the wooden floor below.
"This man stole your silver." The one guard said, jabbing the end of his gun at Jean. Jean ignored the dripping blood, and stared at the bishop guiltily. He knew he shouldn't have committed such a crime, but he wanted to live. Jean Valjean was finally free, but now he could be back in chains. One simple action took him back to the reason he was enslaved by the French guards.
"No, I gave them to him. But my friend, you forgot my last gift. Take these silver candles you left behind!" The Bishop said as he put them into Jean's hands, and he stared bewildered at the older man. The guards left, and the Bishop knelt next to Jean.
Jean Valjean was trembling in every limb. He took the two candlesticks mechanically, and with a bewildered air. He couldn't comprehend why the elderly bishop would give him such precious objects. He saw the women staring at with distaste from their spots, but he could only comprehend what the bishop was saying.
"Now," said the Bishop, "go in peace. By the way, when you return, my friend, it is not necessary to pass through the garden. You can always enter and depart through the street door. It is never fastened with anything but a latch, either by day or by night."
Jean Valjean was like a man on the point of fainting.
The Bishop drew near to him, and said in a low voice:-
"Do not forget, never forget, that you have promised to use this money in becoming an honest man."
Jean Valjean, who had no recollection of ever having promised anything of this magnitude, remained speechless in shock. The Bishop had emphasized the words when he uttered them. He resumed with solemnity,
"Jean Valjean, my brother, you no longer belong to evil, but to good. It is your soul that I buy from you; I withdraw it from black thoughts and the spirit of perdition, and I give it to God."
Jean fled the room, and then the town as fast as he could after thanking the older man. His thoughts whirled, spinning mercilessly. The yellow passport in his pocket seemed to burn a hole in the leather cloak, as his dirty and weary feet continued to move forward.
When moving onto the next town, he committed a sin. He stole a boy's coin, but immediately felt guilty afterwards. It would have been enough for the police to arrest him once more if they were in the vicinity. As he expected, he was reported, and he fled the town in terror.
Jean Valjean knew it; he could feel it in his old and weary bones. The Bishop's words echoed in his head, and he made an immediate decision. He was going to cleanse his soul once and for all.
He took the little yellow paper that forever damned his soul in his hands, and ripped it to pieces.
Jean Valjean was going to make a change in his life.
~ Same Year, Montfermeil ~
There was, at Montfermeil, near Paris, during the first quarter of this century, a sort of cook-shop which no longer exists. This cook-shop was kept by some people named Thenardier, husband and wife. It was situated in Boulanger Lane. Over the door there was a board nailed flat against the wall. Upon this board was painted something which resembled a man carrying another man on his back, the latter wearing the big gilt epaulettes of a general, with large silver stars; red spots represented blood; the rest of the picture consisted of smoke, and probably represented a battle. Below ran this inscription: AT THE SIGN OF SERGEANT OF WATERLOO (Au Sargent de Waterloo).
Nothing is more common than a cart or a truck at the door of a hostelry. Nevertheless, the vehicle, or, to speak more accurately, the fragment of a vehicle, which encumbered the street in front of the cook-shop of the Sergeant of Waterloo, one evening in the spring of 1818, would certainly have attracted, by its mass, the attention of any painter who had passed that way.
It was the fore-carriage of one of those trucks which are used in wooded tracts of country, and which serve to transport thick planks and the trunks of trees. This fore-carriage was composed of a massive iron axle-tree with a pivot, into which was fitted a heavy shaft, and which was supported by two huge wheels. The whole thing was compact, overwhelming, and misshapen. It seemed like the gun-carriage of an enormous cannon. The ruts of the road had bestowed on the wheels, the fellies, the hub, the axle, and the shaft, a layer of mud, a hideous yellowish daubing hue, tolerably like that with which people are fond of ornamenting cathedrals. The wood was disappearing under mud, and the iron beneath rust. Under the axle-tree hung, like drapery, a huge chain, worthy of some Goliath of a convict. This chain suggested, not the beams, which it was its office to transport, but the mastodons and mammoths which it might have served to harness; it had the air of the galleys, but of cyclopean and superhuman galleys, and it seemed to have been detached from some monster. Homer would have bound Polyphemus with it, and Shakespeare, Caliban.
Why was that fore-carriage of a truck in that place in the street? In the first place, to encumber the street; next, in order that it might finish the process of rusting. There is a throng of institutions in the old social order, which one comes across in this fashion as one walks about outdoors, and which have no other reasons for existence than the above.
The center of the chain swung very near the ground in the middle, and in the loop, as in the rope of a swing, there were seated and grouped, on that particular evening, in exquisite interlacement, two little girls; one about two years and a half old, the other, eighteen months; the younger in the arms of the other. A handkerchief, cleverly knotted about them, prevented their falling out. A mother had caught sight of that frightful chain, and had said, "Come! there's a plaything for my children."
The two children, who were dressed prettily and with some elegance, were radiant with pleasure; one would have said that they were two roses amid old iron; their eyes were a triumph; their fresh cheeks were full of laughter. One had chestnut hair; the other, brown. Their innocent faces were two delighted surprises; a blossoming shrub which grew near wafted to the passers-by perfumes which seemed to emanate from them; the child of eighteen months displayed her pretty little bare stomach with the chaste indecency of childhood. Above and around these two delicate heads, all made of happiness and steeped in light, the gigantic fore-carriage, black with rust, almost terrible, all entangled in curves and wild angles, rose in a vault, like the entrance of a cavern. A few paces apart, crouching down upon the threshold of the hostelry, the mother, not a very prepossessing woman, by the way, though touching at that moment, was swinging the two children by means of a long cord, watching them carefully, for fear of accidents, with that animal and celestial expression which is peculiar to maternity. At every backward and forward swing the hideous links emitted a strident sound, which resembled a cry of rage; the little girls were in ecstasies; the setting sun mingled in this joy, and nothing could be more charming than this caprice of chance which had made of a chain of Titans the swing of cherubim.
As she rocked her little ones, the mother hummed in a discordant voice a romance then celebrated, "It must be, said a warrior."
Her song, and the contemplation of her daughters, prevented her hearing and seeing what was going on in the street.
In the meantime, someone had approached her, as she was beginning the first couplet of the romance, and suddenly she heard a voice saying very near her ear, "You have two beautiful children there, Madame."
"To the fair and tender Imogene." replied the mother, continuing her romance; then she turned her head.
A woman stood before her, a few paces distant. This woman also had a child, which she carried in her arms.
She was carrying, in addition, a large carpet-bag, which seemed very heavy.
This woman's child was one of the most divine creatures that it is possible to behold. It was a girl, two or three years of age. She could have entered into competition with the two other little ones, so far as the coquetry of her dress was concerned; she wore a cap of fine linen, ribbons on her bodice, and Valenciennes lace on her cap. The folds of her skirt were raised so as to permit a view of her white, firm, and dimpled leg. She was admirably rosy and healthy. The little beauty inspired a desire to take a bite from the apples of her cheeks. Of her eyes nothing could be known, except that they must be very large, and that they had magnificent lashes. She was asleep.
She slept with that slumber of absolute confidence peculiar to her age. The arms of mothers are made of tenderness; in them children sleep profoundly.
As for the mother, her appearance was sad and poverty-stricken. She was dressed like a working-woman who is inclined to turn into a peasant again. She was young. Was she handsome? Perhaps; but in that attire it was not apparent. Her hair, a golden lock of which had escaped, seemed very thick, but was severely concealed beneath an ugly, tight, close, nun-like cap, tied under the chin. A smile displays beautiful teeth when one has them; but she did not smile. Her eyes did not seem to have been dry for a very long time. She was pale; she had a very weary and rather sickly appearance. She gazed upon her daughter asleep in her arms with the air peculiar to a mother who has nursed her own child. A large blue handkerchief, such as the Invalides use, was folded into a fichu, and concealed her figure clumsily. Her hands were sunburnt and all dotted with freckles, her forefinger was hardened and lacerated with the needle; she wore a cloak of coarse brown woolen stuff, a linen gown, and coarse shoes.
This woman was known as Fantine. She was abandoned by the man she loved to care for her child. Her three friends had also suffered the same fates, but they didn't have a child to look after to. She had sacrificed much for her daughter, Cosette, to survive in this harsh world.
"My name is Madame Thénardier," said the mother of the two little girls."We keep this inn."
Then, her mind still running on her romance, she resumed humming between her teeth, "It must be so; I am a knight, and I am off to Palestine."
This Madame Thénardier was a sandy-complexioned woman, thin and angular- the type of the soldier's wife in all its unpleasantness; and what was odd, with a languishing air, which she owed to her perusal of romances. She was a simpering, but masculine creature. Old romances produce that effect when rubbed against the imagination of cook-shop woman. She was still young; she was barely thirty. If this crouching woman had stood upright, her lofty stature and her frame of a perambulating colossus suitable for fairs, might have frightened the traveller at the outset, troubled her confidence, and disturbed what caused what we have to relate to vanish. A person who is seated instead of standing erect-destinies hang upon such a thing as that.
The traveler told her story, with slight modifications added to it.
That she was a working-woman; that her husband was dead; that her work in Paris had failed her, and that she was on her way to seek it elsewhere, in her own native parts; that she had left Paris that morning on foot; that, as she was carrying her child, and felt fatigued, she had got into the Villemomble coach when she met it; that from Villemomble she had come to Montfermeil on foot; that the little one had walked a little, but not much, because she was so young, and that she had been obliged to take her up, and the jewel had fallen asleep.
At this word she bestowed on her daughter a passionate kiss, which woke her. The child opened her eyes, great blue eyes like her mother's, and looked at-what? Nothing; with that serious and sometimes severe air of little children, which is a mystery of their luminous innocence in the presence of our twilight of virtue. One would say that they feel themselves to be angels, and that they know us to be men. Then the child began to laugh; and although the mother held fast to her, she slipped to the ground with the unconquerable energy of a little being which wished to run. All at once she caught sight of the two others in the swing, stopped short, and put out her tongue, in sign of admiration.
Mother Thénardier released her daughters, made them descend from the swing, and said, "Now amuse yourselves, all three of you."
Children become acquainted quickly at that age, and at the expiration of a minute the little Thénardiers were playing with the new-comer at making holes in the ground, which was an immense pleasure.
The new-comer was very gay; the goodness of the mother is written in the gayety of the child; she had seized a scrap of wood which served her for a shovel, and energetically dug a cavity big enough for a fly. The grave-digger's business becomes a subject for laughter when performed by a child.
The two women pursued their chat.
"What is your little one's name?" Madame Thénardier questioned, trying to get more information out of this woman.
"Cosette." Fantine said vaguely, she didn't bother giving a surname to the woman.
For Cosette, read Euphrasie. The child's name was Euphrasie. But out of Euphrasie the mother had made Cosette by that sweet and graceful instinct of mothers and of the populace which changes Josepha into Pepita, and Francoise into Sillette. It is a sort of derivative which disarranges and disconcerts the whole science of etymologists. We have known a grandmother who succeeded in turning Theodore into Gnon.
"How old is she?" Madame Thénardier questioned curiously.
"She is going on three." Fantine responded quietly, lost in memories of her past.
"That is the age of my eldest, Isabella Éponine Thénardier." Madame Thénardier stated proudly.
In the meantime, the three little girls were grouped in an attitude of profound anxiety and blissfulness; an event had happened; a big worm had emerged from the ground, and they were afraid; and they were in ecstasies over it.
Their radiant brows touched each other; one would have said that there were three heads in one aureole.
"How easily children get acquainted at once!" exclaimed Mother Thénardier; "one would swear that they were three sisters!"
This remark was probably the spark which the other mother had been waiting for. She seized the Thénardier's hand, looked at her fixedly, and said, "Will you keep my child for me?"
The Thénardier made one of those movements of surprise which signify neither assent nor refusal at the same time.
Cosette's mother continued, "You see, I cannot take my daughter to the country. My work will not permit it. With a child one can find no situation. People are ridiculous in the country. It was the good God who caused me to pass your inn. When I caught sight of your little ones, so pretty, so clean, and so happy, it overwhelmed me. I said: `Here is a good mother. That is just the thing; that will make three sisters.' And then, it will not be long before I return. Will you keep my child for me?"
"I must see about it," replied the Thénardier, thinking about the possibilities that could occur.
"I will give you six francs a month." Fantine offered desperately, she needed someone to watch her darling Cosette.
"Here a man's voice called from the depths of the cook-shop, "Not for less than seven francs. And six months paid in advance."
"Six times seven makes forty-two," said the Thénardier.
"I will give it," said the mother, who was somewhat relieved at this offer.
"And fifteen francs in addition for preliminary expenses," added the man's voice.
"Total, fifty-seven francs," said Madame Thénardier. And she hummed vaguely, with these figures, "It must be, said a warrior."
"I will pay it," said the mother. "I have eighty francs. I shall have enough left to reach the country, by travelling on foot. I shall earn money there, and as soon as I have a little I will return for my darling."
The man's voice resumed, "The little one has an outfit?"
"That is my husband," said the Thénardier with a loving smile.
"Of course she has an outfit, the poor treasure.-I understood perfectly that it was your husband.-And a beautiful outfit, too! A senseless outfit, everything by the dozen, and silk gowns like a lady. It is here, in my carpet-bag." Fantine said, as she motioned towards the bag now lying limply at her side.
"You must hand it over," struck in the man's voice again, a taunting edge in it.
"Of course I shall give it to you," said the mother. "It would be very queer if I were to leave my daughter quite naked!" She exclaimed, almost as if it were a crime not to.
The master's face appeared, and his red hair and green eyes were bright in the sunlight.
"That's good," said he. The bargain was concluded in that minute. The mother passed the night at the inn, gave up her money and left her child, fastened her carpet-bag once more, now reduced in volume by the removal of the outfit, and light henceforth and set out on the following morning, intending to return soon. People arrange such departures tranquilly; but they are despairs in reality!
A neighbor of the Thénardiers 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 tomorrow; 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 with a somewhat smug smile.
Without knowing it, Fantine had just set herself and her daughter Cosette into a dangerous game of the cat and mouse.
A/N: Please read and review.
I hope everyone enjoyed this! ^_^
