A/N- As a special treat to those who are interested in the etymology of names, my name choices for the OCs here are, in fact, intended to be ironic or meaningful. I don't know if anyone besides myself is into that, but on the off-chance someone else happens to like that sort of thing... well, you'l understand them all by the end of the story, I hope.

1. Mme. Leveque

Madame Claire Leveque, the septuagenerian inhabitant of Number Eleven Rue de les Cerises, was a sharp-eyed widow who was beginning to feel both her age and that frequent complaint of the elderly: the desire for younger company. She was a tall, thin woman who had once been an exquisite beauty and whose face now contained that serene nobility of handsome features made to withstand the ravages of time. Her eyes were a bright hazel that was undimmed behind the spectacles she occasionally wore, and despite her age, her posture remained almost severely straight. She made it her habit to dress simply but fastidiously and with well-cultivated taste. She rose every morning at precisely eight o'clock, at which time her maid dressed her silver hair.

Her husband, the roguish and charming Colonel Leveque, had been slain during the Ulm Campaign. Since that time she had been the only occupant of the large house at the end of the cul-de-sac, with the exception of her staff, all of whom she had taken to calling by their christian names.

On the morning of the twelfth of July, Mme. Leveque was sitting in the conservatory, taking advantage of the midsummer sunshine.

At around eleven o'clock in the morning, her manservant, Patrice Bonnay, entered the conservatory with a formal inclination of the head. "There is a letter for you, Madame," he said, presenting the envelope.

Mme. Leveque took the letter and slit it open with the silver-plated knife Bonnay presented to her. On unfolding the paper inside, which assailed her with a heavy odor of tobacco, she read the following:

"My most genial Mme. Leveque,

You must forgive me for daring to address my petty conserns to you, but my dear madame, your kindness and generosity toward the unfortunate is renowned, and I know not who else I may turn to in my hour of need. I am a man who once was prosperus but, through no fault of my own, have fallen into ruin. I am a craftsman who lacks even a sou to buy the materiels of his trade. You see, once I was a maker of fine stringed instruments in Nice, well-respected and much in demand. Three years ago, I came to Paris to ply my trade in this city of cities, but everything of value that I owned was lost in an ill-conseeved wager except one violin, my masterpiece, which I intended to sell to a wealthy lord in order to pay my debts and start afresh. I had high hopes and I had sworn never to risk my family's good fortune so foolishly again. Tragically, on the night before I was to complete the final work on the instrument and deliver it to the gentleman I mentioned, I was robbed and the violin stolen. Since that day, I have been destitute. My children shiver from cold and weep from hunger, and my wife has been taken dangerously ill. What little money I have is taken to pay for medicines, and I fear that soon we will be turned out of what poor lodgings we are able to keep.

I beg of you, have pity on me and my family in this desperate time. I have sent my eldest daughter with this letter entreeting you to send us but a little money, that I may pay the concierge and appease my wife's chemist. God willing, your generous soul will guide you to help us still further, and assist us enough to allow me to begin my formerly prosperus career once more.

Yours in humble servitude,
Fournier

P.S. My daughter awaits your orders."

Mme. Leveque read the letter twice, a thoughtful frown on her face as she studied the contents thoroughly. An idea was beginning to form in her mind. She wordlessly handed the letter to her manservant, who also read it as a matter of course.

"Have you seen this daughter, Patrice?" she asked when he had finished the letter.

He scowled. "Unfortunately."

"What does she look like?"

"I would not care to say," Bonnay replied. At his mistress's raised eyebrow, he expanded: "That is, she is not a very pretty thing, at any rate. Like all the other guttersnipes one sees, you know. Dirty. Badly clothed."

Mme. Leveque nodded slowly. "I see. Is she still here?"

Bonnay inclined his head in an affirmative. "She refused to leave. She claimed to have been instructed to wait on a reply. Shall I send her away now, Madame?"

The lady did not reply for a long moment, apparently deep in reflection. Then, slowly but decisively, she said, "No. No, I don't think so. Inquire as to her address, please, and be sure it's accurate. Tell her to return home and await a reply sometime this afternoon."

Bonnay said nothing, and retreated with a polite bow, but Mme. Leveque had known him long enough to see in his eyes the desire to give a long-suffering sigh. She watched him go with some small amusement at the opinion he would never show openly.

Several minutes later, Bonnay returned bearing the envelope in which Fournier's letter had come, on the back of which was now written an address in blue ink. "This is the address, Madame," he informed her.

Mme. Leveque had not yet made up her mind about the thought that would not let her be, but as she studied the address and took note of the very poor district in which it was located, she felt her decision growing clearer by the moment.

While she was debating with herself, Bonnay waited quietly at her elbow. He seemed to hesitate for some time on the verge of speaking, opening his mouth every few moments only to close it again, as he held too high a respect for the gentlewoman he attended to be precipitous in addressing her. It did not take long for Mme. Leveque to grow annoyed with this.

"For goodness sake, Patrice, what do you want to say?" she asked.

"If I may ask, Madame, what exactly do you intend to do?"

"I think," she said, with some consideration in her tone, "that I intend to pay a visit to this Monsieur Fournier."

Bonnay pursed his lips. "I would advise against it, Madame."

"Oh? And why is that?"

"It is plain to me that he is nothing but a petty thief, a con man of ill-breeding who earns his bread by snatching it from the very fingers of good souls like yourself," he said, not without a certain relish.

Mme. Leveque shook her head in amusement. "Ah, Patrice, you think I did not guess that at once? I am not so naive as you would like me to be. But I have an idea, and I think this is an excellent opportunity to solve a problem I have been considering for some time."

"What problem is that?"

She looked at him with those lively bright eyes. "This quiet old house is very large," she said enigmatically. Then she rose to her feet. "This afternoon, I will pay the Fourniers a visit at-" She glanced at the envelope still in her hands. "-the Gorbeau tenement. Please have a carriage ready at one o'clock." With no further word, she swept from the room.

Bonnay watched her go anxiously.

"Well?"

Eponine slouched into the room and shot an annoyed glance at the piggy-eyed little man seated on the only chair in the apartment still in possession of all four legs. "Well, what?" she muttered at him.

"You delivered the letters?"

"Yes."

"Well?"

She shrugged. "The benevolent dandy said no, the fat old priest wasn't in, and the lady took our address and gave me some bluster about sending a reply this afternoon. I bet we won't hear from her ever again."

Gilbert Thenardier, alias Fournier, alias Jondrette, alias Fabantou, alias Genflot etc., glared at his daughter from beneath eyelids swollen and yellowing, showing the effects of much alcohol over many years, and said, "You had better hope your sister has better luck if you want to eat tonight."

"I don't expect it," she said off-handedly. "It's been since Friday that we had any bread... what day was Friday? Was it the tenth? I don't think it was the tenth. No! It was the ninth! That's right, it was the ninth! It was 'Vroche's birthday. He's turned ten now. I found him and bought him a little bit of white bread. We shared it. That was nice. I could have gotten more if I had bought black bread instead, but it was something nice for his birthday..."

"Shut up," Thenardier spat at her. "You prattle too much."

Seeming not to hear him, she simply trailed off into pitchy humming, some sprightly little song she had heard sung on the street that morning.

"You shouldn't have spent the extra for the white loaf," came a throaty voice from the corner. Eloise Thenardier sat, somewhat emaciated but still hulking and toady, on the cot in the corner nearest the window, watching her eldest child with protruding eyes.

"It was nice," Eponine repeated. "For Gavroche's birthday."

"It was money we didn't have to waste," Thenardier said bluntly.

Eponine just shrugged again.

She sat down in the corner opposite her mother and began toying absently with the hem of her skirt, staring out the window with a closed expression. Nothing at all could be read in her face. This was intentional, a habit formed from many years of carefully guarding her thoughts. She stayed that way for some time, ignoring the fidgeting of her mother and the mutterings of her father as he spoke mostly to himself, just watching the vivid blue of the summer sky and trying to see pictures in the clouds. Perhaps an hour passed in this manner, and only Eponine knew exactly what it was she was thinking about.

Some time later, the door opened abruptly and the youngest Thenardier female all but fell into the room. Azelma had fared better in poverty than her elder sister; or rather, because she had a great deal more mass to lose, she looked better despite having lost it. Like her sister, she was dirty and ill-used, but she had inherited her mother's build and in consequence looked a bit healthier despite being chronically underfed. Her eyes were green like her sister's, but of a lesser shade, or perhaps it was simply that her gaze was more vacant.

At the present moment, however, her face was animated by a kind of eagerness and childlike excitement. "There's a lady!" she exclaimed. "A lady in a carriage!"

"There's lots of ladies in carriages in Paris," Mme. Thenardier said to her younger daughter.

"Did you get anything from that lot I had you run to today?" Thenardier asked.

Azelma shook her head, breathless. "No, but that doesn't matter. You don't understand, the lady is here! Right now! She's on her way up, to see us!"