A/N: Here's a POV I've wanted to write for a while now. I wanted to update "Demeter at Eleusis" this weekend, but couldn't find it in me yet to write something heavy. So for now, something light.

For everyone's perusal for Ladies Fic Month, the thoughts of Morgance Leclair, the long suffering concierge of the house at the Rue Jean Jacques Rousseau . A historical note: the Rue Jean Jacques Rousseau would, then and now, be located in another part of Paris. I have only appropriated and renamed a small street in the Latin Quartier at least for this universe.

This is dedicated to my grandmother.

37: A Concierge and Her Boys

The Pope should get around to making a patron saint for landlords, landladies, and concierges. We could honestly use some divine intervention in this particular occupation since we have to be good at housekeeping, repairing, bookkeeping, and even negotiating whether it's among tenants or just with the neighbours. It's far from the quiet idyll of simply staying home all day, keeping a house clean and collecting rent. When one is a concierge in the Latin Quartier, one has to be prepared for anything.

When the house at the Rue Jean Jacques Rousseau first came into my keeping, I was hardly thirty. Of course I knew that if I took it, I'd never be able to leave the area, but was there any other recourse for a young widow without any children? I could not go back to my parents and worry them any further with my unprotected state. 'This house will care for you if you care for it,' my father told me when he gave me the keys. Dear Papa, God rest him, was right about that. I have never wanted for anything material since; the only thing lacking in my life is peace and quiet.

I've had all kinds of tenants. Thankfully I've been lucky to have put up peaceable families, lonely wanderers, dashing veterans from Napoleon's Grand Army, and even a few lodgers who hardly made their presence known apart from the rent that they would leave at my door every month. The Latin Quartier never lacks for characters though, which explains, among other people, the one bousingot lodger who almost brought down the house with his indoor pyrotechnics. Thankfully he only left scorch marks. There was also that former artist's model who walked about in a morning dress, insisting that this was in case the Queen happened to call. I could mention others, but this is supposed to be a polite chat, isn't it?

Then there are my two boys. Everyone knows them nowadays as brilliant and powerful men, upstanding citizens, leaders of a new age, but I still remember the days when they reached for dreams that their hands were still too soft to hold. I could not help thinking this when I first met Combeferre. It was summer of the year 1823, a time when even the very air in the Latin Quartier sometimes grew thick with the feel of being ultra. I had received a letter of introduction stating to the effect that Francois Combeferre was from a family of good repute in Lyon, that he was in Paris to study Medicine, and that he was an 'earnest, studious young man'. I must confess that I had a picture in my mind of a pedantic prig who would turn up his nose each time he was in the hall, and who would hand me the rent as if I had been begging tearfully for it and it was God's good grace that made him the provider of a paltry sum for my upkeep.

So was it any wonder that I was taken aback by the skinny boy who knocked timidly on my door one afternoon? At first I could hardly see his eyes behind his thick spectacles and his thick mop of dark hair. I later learned he was a day short of eighteen. Yet for a schoolboy he was well-dressed and carried himself well, and I knew at once who he was. "Good day. Monsieur Combeferre, isn't it?"

He shook his dark hair out of his face quickly, as if this was a nervous habit, only to have it fall back again when he bowed. "That's my name. It's a pleasure to meet you, Madame."

I wanted to correct him and say I hadn't been 'Madame' to anyone for a long time; as a widow who hardly knew her spouse, I could have just as well gone by 'Mademoiselle' once more. He was polite though, and earnest as I'd been told, so I smiled and let it be.

Did I know then what he would grow to be? No, not really, though perhaps I should have expected something from the fact that he had brought only two valises of clothing but several large boxes of books. "They cannot all be for Medicine," I said one day later that summer when I went up to clean the hall next to his room. "I've had medical students board here before and none of them brought even half as much as you have here."

Combeferre laughed as he put one big tome back on a shelf. Even in those days his laugh was rich and melodious. "I cannot be a good physician if I am unable to reach my patients. I can do that better by learning something of what they also know," he said.

I saw that he had volumes on everything from farming, spinning, sailing and all kinds of trades, as well as classifications of every sort of rock, plant, and beast, and even whole charts of the night sky. "Are you studying to be a doctor or a schoolmaster?" I asked him.

"One may be both. I've found that one can change a great many things about one's health through knowing how to improve conditions of living, working, or simply thinking," he said.

For a moment I tried to imagine him first as a grammar school teacher, and then as a revered professor of the Sorbonne. It was too difficult for me to do so, not when I could see how his hands were only beginning to grow hard and callused from too many hours thumbing through books or dissecting at the morgue. I hated those occasions when he'd come back smelling like a charnel house or drenched in questionable fluids. A few lodgers did complain, and at least one did move out after a time; this always happened when I had at least one medical student in residence. Sometimes I prevented this calamity by letting out the entire house to medical student lodgers, but when Combeferre first arrived in Paris, the other apartments were occupied and his father insisted that he not have a roommate to be free from any corrupt habits from 'strange company'.

So I was truly relieved when about a year later, Combeferre mentioned that an acquaintance of his, a son of one of his father's business contacts, would be coming to Paris for the next academic year. "He's going to take up law, so you will not have to worry about him bringing any more strangeness, Madame," Combeferre said. He had filled out a little bit over the past months, traded his thick spectacles for a more elegant pair, and was becoming one of the more popular students at the medical school owing to his good manners and near-encyclopaedic knowledge of all things scientific.

"Heaven forbid yes, that you find a partner for your experiments!" I told him. I could not throw him out; he paid his rent, he did not start brawls or bring around dangerous company, but his scientific inquiries had left more scorch marks on the walls, stained the floorboards, and given a few lodgers a deathly fear of moths. Of course law students posed a whole new set of problems-I should explain that for some of us concierges, a law student was synonymous with a loafer-but I'd dealt with my share of them before, and surely I would not be fazed.

It was breakfast time when Enjolras arrived at the Rue Jean Jacques Rousseau. He had travelled all through the night, but no one would have known it from just looking at him. He had knocked once, strong and clear with no sign of temerity. "Good morning. Are you Citizenness Leclair?" he greeted when I opened the door.

It took me a moment to get my head around this form of address as well as the fact that this newcomer appeared incredibly young. I did not know then he was already nineteen years old; he never quite mentioned why he came to Paris a little later than most young men did. He was even thinner than Combeferre had been a year ago, his golden hair was a mass of messy curls, and his face was far too clean shaven. I might have asked if he was lost, had it not been for the calmness in his blue eyes, the sort that one only sees in those who know where they're going. "The name is Leclair, yes," I said. "You must be Monsieur Enjolras."

He nodded slightly. "I'm called that."

How strange he was even then! I thought of commenting on it, but then Combeferre was already at the doorway, having just come all the way from his third floor room. "There you are, Enjolras! How was the journey?" he greeted warmly.

The new tenant smiled before clasping Combeferre's arm briefly. "Very well. It's been a long time, Combeferre." His voice had a slight ring of a Provencal accent, but otherwise it was elegant and had a well-educated sound to it.

I knew better than to make any assumptions about what this other young man, Antoine Enjolras, might be like. I am sure that even if I came up with some, he would have disproved them all anyway. He was a contradiction: he never lacked for company and always had friends dropping in to borrow things, or simply just to ask for his advice. Yet I did not see him go to the theater, or to play billiards or dance with friends. He often stayed out late, but he never returned home smelling of wine and cheap cologne. He did not even notice all the grisettes who had now somehow become a regular presence on the Rue Jean Jacques Rousseau ever since he arrived. I had no idea what he occupied his spare hours with, not till the Sunday morning when I heard a dreadful creaking from the ceiling of my own room. Most of my other lodgers were out at Mass, and Combeferre was visiting an ailing friend of his.

I immediately raced upstairs as fast as my knees could manage it. "Don't you dare tear up my floorboards, young man!" I shouted as I pounded on his door. It wouldn't be the first time someone had attempted such a thing, but I was certain that my floor could not take any more of that sort of abuse.

Enjolras opened the door after a few long moments. "My apologies for the disturbance, Citizenness," he said calmly. "I had thought that I was alone in the house."

At least he did not bother to lie, especially since I could see even from where I stood just how much work he'd done on the flooring. "You had better not be hiding anything that can make this house go up in flames," I said as I raised my candle to get a look at what he was so bent on concealing. I found only a heap of papers, as well as a large banner reading 'Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, or Death'. I had never thought to see one of those slogans under my own roof; the very sight of it had me feeling as if I was a young girl once more in Bordeaux, seeing those banners posted everywhere by the overenthusiastic deputies of that city.

Enjolras looked at me gravely, clearly seeing that I understood. "It would be a fire of another sort."

How exasperating he was! "I should get Combeferre to talk some sense into you!" I expected him to take umbrage at this but he was silent and pensive. "What, he knows?" I screeched.

"It would be an understatement," he said as he crossed his arms.

"It's none of my business if you boys want to be political, but I would rather that you spent your nights wooing your mistress!" I said. He merely raised an eyebrow before returning to his room, perhaps now having guessed that I wouldn't evict him. That was when I realized that he did not have a mistress, or any sweetheart to speak of, whether in Paris or in Aix. It didn't surprise me entirely given his sobriety, but it did seem a shame to me, then, that an eligible man would deny himself the joy of courting a woman worthy of his station.

The one who went wooing was Combeferre. I might have missed the fact entirely, had it not been for one autumn evening, about two or so years after Enjolras moved in. That year, there was an entire family, the Millards, staying in the room next to Combeferre's. They had five daughters, and of course the older ones had a massive tendre for their fellow lodgers.

On that occasion, both Enjolras and Combeferre were home and finishing schoolwork before going to some meeting. One of their other friends, a very amiable fellow Courfeyrac, was making small talk at my lodge. Suddenly the prettiest of the Millard girls, a ravishing blonde named Milette, knocked on my door. "Madame Leclair, is Monsieur Combeferre-oh, sorry, I don't think I've met you before, Monsieur," she said as soon as she saw who was visiting.

Courfeyrac was all smiles as he bowed to her. "The pleasure is mine to meet you, Mademoiselle. I'm simply Courfeyrac."

Milette blushed deeply. "I'm Mademoiselle Milette, the eldest. Are you a medical student too?"

"Alas, I do not have that gift," Courfeyrac said. He was all good humor and gallantry as he took her hand. "I'm afraid I will grow into one of the bores of the legal profession."

Milette laughed but I saw how her eyes strayed towards where Combeferre was hurrying down the stairs, all the while haranguing Enjolras about something. "I should go before my father worries. It was good to meet you, Monsieur," she said before she dashed out of the room. I saw that Combeferre greeted her cordially while Enjolras only nodded, but that was clearly no satisfaction for this girl.

Then I saw Courfeyrac grinning and shaking his head, a sign that he did know something about this brief half-interlude. "Enjolras does not have a lover. Who has Combeferre been wooing?" I asked.

"A friend. She lives at Picpus and helps her father with his fabric business," he said.

"Is she beautiful?"

"She suits him very well."

I could not imagine for the life of me what sort of woman Courfeyrac could have been referring to. A girl who truly suited Combeferre would have to be a scholar, or at least fond of extensive reading. Would there ever be anyone who had a booklist that compared to half of his? Was such a thing possible?

Two days later, I got my answer. I was in the neighbourhood of the Sorbonne to meet an old friend when I espied Combeferre and another friend of his, a cheerful fellow named Joly. They were talking to a tall young woman with chestnut curls. She was not beautiful; her face was long and her cheekbones just not shaped the right way. However she was confident and respectable, and clearly had more than just Combeferre's attention. I saw how he took her hand and kissed it, and then I knew this was the friend that Courfeyrac had spoken of.

I met her more properly later that same week, when Combeferre had forgotten a pamphlet while he was out with her, and they stopped by the tenement. "Madame Leclair, I'd like you to meet Mademoiselle Claudine Andreas. Claudine, my concierge Madame Leclair," he had explained before dashing upstairs to fetch the book.

Claudine nodded politely to me, but that serious face grew mirthful as Combeferre's footsteps faded. "You're used to him, I can see that," she remarked. "I'd go up to help him, but he has yet to introduce me to his orderly chaos."

I laughed for she had hit on the truth of the matter. It was for this, and the fact that I liked her name, that I invited her to stay on a few minutes while I served up some coffee. Combeferre hadn't been entirely surprised to see us talking but he only shook his head resignedly when Claudine informed him that we were discussing him and the other men in their circle. "That is how every great man is disarmed," he said philosophically, but without rancour, before quitting the lodge to let us finish our coffee in peace.

For a while I believed that Claudine would steady Combeferre, and that her kindness and good sense would slowly win him over to a less dangerous course. Doesn't that happen to many a man in love? I had dared to hope too that she would have some friend someplace who would be able to charm Enjolras and help him do away with his reputation as an aloof young man. I abandoned all hope of that the night that another one of their friends, Grantaire, raised his tumbler of brandy and declared that Claudine was Athena. goddess of war and wisdom, I knew that as much. She would be with Combeferre, Enjolras, and the boys in battle if need be, or if she was permitted to.

I never worried about them, not even during the worst of their squabbles. She was too much his equal and he knew it. I always believed that though Combeferre had a special respect for Enjolras and Courfeyrac, he was more in awe of Claudine than of anyone he ever knew.

The first time I truly feared for them was not during the glorious days of July 1830. There had been too little time to worry, what with bad news coming left and right, and suddenly there was fighting on the streets. I turned the front room into a sort of clinic where the wounded could rest while waiting for Combeferre, Joly, or their other friends to tend to them. I would have cried with relief on that evening after Lafayette gave control of the government to Louis-Philippe. I did not like the Duc de Orleans much; for what difference could he make given where he was from? Still, I was tired of washing bloodstains off my floor.

That night, Combeferre had fallen asleep while tending to his patients. Enjolras had come home far too late; in fact it was almost morning, but he still helped me haul Combeferre to his lodgings. His eyes were hollow and wearied as we worked. "Why so sullen? Aren't you happy to be alive?" I asked him.

His brow furrowed and his expression grew stern when he looked at me. "It's not fitting to rejoice when much has been stolen," he said as we managed to get Combeferre's apartment door open.

I was shocked by his choice of words. "The Bourbons have already left, so what more do you want?"

"To put it simply, justice," Enjolras said. "That cannot happen when a man can still arbitrarily assert authority over the common will, whether warranted by a constitution or not."

"You speak as if you would have us return to the days of 1793," I told him. "I remember the streets of Bordeaux running with blood, and I do not think the people will stand for it."

"The people cannot be united through feints and false starts," he replied harshly.

"What is a false start?" I asked him, but before he could say anything to it, Combeferre woke up with such a jolt that we dropped him on the floor. I never asked him again about it, but I knew that the last vestiges of that fresh-faced boy from Aix were gone. Now I had a revolutionary under my roof.

From then, I could see nearly everything that would happen. I knew what else Enjolras now hid under the floorboards, and could only be thankful that I had learned how to disguise the smell of gunpowder. I pretended not to know what my boys and their friends discussed in increasingly loud whispers; so much the better in case the police got too curious. I reassured Claudine on the one day she worried about Combeferre after a violent emeute, but I took care not to make any promises or speak too much of the future. Then when the cholera struck Paris and felled General Lamarque, I understood that this was the sign that so many men had been waiting for, that this would be another attempt to overcome that 'false start'. I even knew that somehow, my boys would make it through and that I would not be burying them on that day.

There was just one thing, or rather person, I could not have foreseen. She arrived after the revolution, at the beginning of autumn, but so deep in the night that I did not hear her footsteps at my door. I woke up at dawn just to bring everyone's things to the laundresses. On my way out I heard one of the washerwomen whistling to me. "Morgance! After all these years, something's gotten past your door."

"My what?" I had no patience for figures of speech at that hour.

"Your tenant Citizen Enjolras has brought home some trollop!"

I felt as if my ears were on fire. Enjolras never had a mistress or even a passing fancy, why would he suddenly turn to such a woman? Yet I knew how secretive he was, and so I hastened to find out. When I arrived home, Claudine was waiting at my lodgings. With her was a girl wearing only a shawl and a nightshirt against the early morning chill. She was so young, so terribly thin and pallid, and with such a tired and despondent look that it was impossible that she was being solicited for such dire services.

I took a deep breath before speaking. "Claudine, who is your new friend?"

"She's Eponine Thenardier," Claudine said. "Eponine, meet Citizenness Leclair, the concierge."

"How did she get here?" I asked.

Eponine shook her head before Claudine could speak. "It's a long story, I s'pose," she said.

Claudine smiled weakly. "Citizenness may we please borrow a dress? Eponine's own clothes aren't usable for the moment."

"Oh certainly. We can't have you catching your death now, child," I said, directing this last part to Eponine. She had so many marks of a hard life on her person, but I did not want to risk trying her any further. I tried my best but the only dress I could find for her was a purple gown that had grown tight around my waist. It still sagged off her shoulders though, and the color did not go well with her hair, which I learned later was actually a sort of reddish brown under the dirt.

Still she smiled a little when she put it on. "It's warm. That's good for me," she said in a voice that was so cracked and raspy, almost like old paper being crushed underfoot.

I might have been horrified of her entirely had it not been for her three young brothers: Gavroche, Neville, and Jacques. I never quite found out how they managed to track down their sister, but that they did and she had no intention of abandoning them. She was too young to be their mother; she was only seventeen while Gavroche was twelve, Neville was seven, and Jacques was five. However she was so fiercely protective of them that in some ways it more than made up for their not having parents. As for Eponine herself, she was not the sort of girl one could just mother, not when her recently deceased mother was still so dear to her. I could only be an aunt to her at best, and we were content with that.

Now my house was full again: the Thenardier siblings had a room on the second floor, while Enjolras retained his lodgings next to theirs. Combeferre had taken over the entire third storey with all of his books and laboratory experiments, but he was often away from home owing to his working the night shift at the Necker. There were troubles here and there, but I had little to worry about from day to day since Enjolras, Combeferre, and Eponine always helped me with chores, and they had worked out how to care for the three younger Thenardiers. Things felt simple for a while, with Enjolras passing the bar and becoming a lawyer at last, while Eponine had a job at a bookshop. The Thenardier boys looked to them almost as parents. Had no one known any better, we could have all been mistaken for a family complete with a bachelor uncle and a widowed grandmother.

Perhaps it was because they were so young.

Deep down I knew this idyll would not last. When had my boys ever been content with quiet? As for Eponine, she was growing up quickly. Yet I did not see what else was coming, all the events which have since been written down elsewhere as part of the annals of this present Republic. How could I know what would happen the time when Enjolras and Eponine once went to a political meeting? It was simply a campaign sortie of the Radicaux party, where Enjolras was running for a legislative position. By the next day they were known as a radical young man with fiery words that could move even marble, and a daring young woman with a gift for writing down what everyone hoped for.

I never told them that even before the elections, some of their visitors were already referring to them as Citizen and Citizenness Enjolras. I had thought it was misinterpreting a close friendship or obvious tendre, at least till the February morning when I woke up to the sound of rain. I had opened the door of the concierge's lodge and found them sitting on the tenement steps. They were talking, and somehow in the middle of it Eponine bowed her head slightly. Enjolras had leaned in closer to listen, right at the instant she also moved towards him. I cringed when I heard the resulting bump, but I knew better than to laugh. Yet when I looked at them again, I saw Enjolras touch Eponine's cheek before kissing her lips. It was brief, almost as long as it would take for one to blink, but it was more than enough.

The rest of the story is straightforward: those two married first, one fine summer day just a year after that revolution that changed all our lives. As for Combeferre and Claudine, they went about it a little more quietly the following spring. It meant too that Combeferre would finally leave his apartment and move with Claudine to the neighbourhood of Picpus, much like how Enjolras, Eponine, and the Thenardier brothers had all moved to the nearby neighbourhood of the Marche Saint-Germain.

The night before Combeferre moved out the last of his belongings, I went up to help pack up his bags. "It will feel strange to have a new lodger here," I said. "You and Enjolras were here so long, I almost cannot remember how it would be to look for a new tenant."

"You'll find someone less troublesome, certainly," Combeferre said. "Young men who won't tear up the floorboards and leave stains on the walls-"

"Oh do stop it Combeferre!" I said. Every word of his evoked a memory, of every rule I'd made for them to break, of every waking nightmare and silent hope I had for them, of every night I'd waited for them to come home safely-as a mother ought to do. "You boys were my favourite tenants. At least the ones I will remember the best."

"Only remembering, Citizenness?" Combeferre asked lightly.

I shook my head, knowing he had caught me where I stood. Concierges may have preferences, but really, I couldn't pick which of my boys I loved best.