Tell Me Quickly What's The Story
The next day: Fauborg Saint Antoine, Paris
"Are you sure you want to go with me here, Cosette? It might be a little dangerous, especially for you"
"It's more of my story than yours,"
Eponine sighed. "Very well. Stay close...I promised myself I'd never ever come back here!"
"Why, I thought you lived at that old Gorbeau house?" Cosette asked, looking around the dingy neighborhood. The fauborg had received a little improvement since the revolution; more people worked, and less loafed, and the street was empty of refuse. Still, the houses hadn't yet lost their forbidding look.
Eponine cringed. "No, I never really lived here, but I know the street," she said quietly. It was the neighborhood where she'd spent one week as a streetwalker.
The two young girls were dressed in drab clothing; Cosette had put aside her lace collars, while Eponine wore a work dress and her usual coat. They were inconspicuous as they wove through the usual traffic of people passing by each ramshackle building. At last, Eponine stopped in front of a dilapidated six-storey tenement.
"Here. Montparnasse said to go to the top floor," she said. She looked at Cosette and shook her head. "No, you shouldn't climb so far, not as you are. Wait down here while I run up,"
"I thought you didn't speak any more to them," Cosette said as they entered the rundown house.
"Ah, but Papa is still Papa, and Parnasse is a good boy when he keeps his lingre away," Eponine said, laughing to herself at her own joke as she hurried up the stairs. The sound of her footsteps hadn't quite faded when a creaky door opened on the third storey.
"Eponine?" the voice of M. Thenardier was heard from the upper floors.
"Papa, there you are! No, it's not about that. The Lark is asking...she wants to know about her mamma," Eponine said hurriedly.
"I don't remember. I don't care. Ask that old man. He'd know better."
"He's not saying anything. Papa, you knew. So did Maman, but God rest her! Don't you have a letter, a note? I know the lady wrote!"
"What will you give me?"
"I haven't a sou! And I need a new coat..."
Downstairs, Cosette strained to hear the rest of the discussion, now carried out in low voices. At last, she heard footsteps getting further away, followed by a long silence. Five minutes later, Eponine reappeared on the stairway, clutching a yellowed paper. She was out of breath for having run down the stairs.
"It was under the bed. It's that last note, the one that got you away leaving us with the fifteen hundred francs..." Eponine explained, thrusting the note at her friend. "Read and see, your mamma was sending for you!"
Cosette looked at the letter for a few moments before tremulously folding it up and putting it in her pocket. "Thank you, Eponine. Twice over, you've made my happiness complete. Now if only my father could be happy himself...if things could be as it used to be with us," she said softly.
Eponine smiled crookedly. "First one was for Marius, the second I don't know. I don't really know why. Now we'd better go; Marius won't be happy that I brought you here!"
The two girls went out into the street, only to catch sight of another familiar face as they neared the end of the street. "It's him, isn't it?" Cosette asked Eponine.
Eponine shrugged diffidently. "What's the going, Montparnasse?" she called to the newcomer.
The dandy smiled at her worriedly. "You saved me a trip. I may as well tell you. I've just spoken with Magnon."
Eponine's eyes widened. "Oh and how? She's out?"
"We all are. Listen girl, she wants the boys," Montparnasse said darkly.
"No! You know I never approved of it!"
"What difference does it make?"
Eponine looked up at him, a hard look going into her already rough face. "I won't let her! Mamma didn't want her boys, but I want my brothers!"
"Quiet, Eponine, you're making a scene!" Montparnasse hissed. "And with her here too!" he added, glancing at Cosette.
"Tell me where she is," Eponine demanded.
"On the way to your flat."
"Oh!" Eponine muttered. "Cosette, you'd better find a fiacre home. And I have to make a run,"
"You'll get there faster in a fiacre," Cosette said.
"I haven't the time! I'll see you all after!" Eponine said, hurrying into the shadows.
Montreuil-sur-mer
Madame Victurnien, now a wizened old hag, looked even more dried up as she frowned at Enjolras. "Why you and that other attorney are bothering with that tramp's story, I don't want to know. I just need my paper settled, young man."
"It's an affair that needs to be brought to light. That, and the story of the mayor of this town. His name was Jean Valjean, that we all know. Your name was on the roster of factory workers" Enjolras explained, standing up straight. He could see eye to eye with the crone, even though Madame Victurnien stood on a step.
Madame Victurnien laughed. "We all had to make a living."
"So did Fantine. Her name was there. You knew her, I'm sure," Enjolras said wearily.
When he and Marius had visited the factory, an old foreman had given them the roster of every worker who'd spent at least a month in the factory. Many of the names listed were already gone from the town. A few, like Madame Victurnien, still lingered.
However, almost all the listed had family to speak of, save for some, one of them being Fantine. It was only natural that the inquiry began with such loopholes on the paper.
"We knew him as M. Madeleine. What a virtuous though odd man. I will admit that when he was taken, I was lucky to have survived all the same," Madame Victurnine said with a cruel smile. "I'm not sorry for putting that whore out of the factory. I knew she could never acknowledge that child of hers, so she left him with that Dernard family in Montfermeil."
"You mean Thenardier?" Marius asked from his seat nearby.
"That's the name. That girl was one of the urchins here, then she got airs and went to Paris," Madame Victurnien said, turning to spit. "Then she went back here, showing off that blonde hair and that smile, playing the innocent and acting like the angel when the truth was..."
Marius' eyes narrowed with fury. "Leave her be. She's dead already."
"I expected that much. What of? The clap? Consumption? Whatever streetwalkers die of?" Madame Victurnien asked. "What are you anyway? Some relatives of hers?"
"She would have been my mother-in-law. Madame Victurnien, my wife needs to know what happened." Marius said firmly.
"Well, the woman died. Here in the town. And buried I don't know where. Probably the mayor took care of it." Madame Victurnien said. "He was planning to go to Montfermeil, so I hear from the boys who carried the post."
"And this was when?" Marius asked.
"Good Lord, you expect me to remember?" Madame Victurnien scolded. "It must have been some eight winters ago, or less!"
"Eight...it all fits, Enjolras!" Marius said, now driven to excitement. "Cosette said she came to Paris eight years ago. Her mother had blonde hair, she remembered!"
"Calm down, Marius We can't know for sure..." Enjolras said, smiling slightly. "Now Madame, the papers..."
Madame Victurnien snatched the documents from Enjolras' hand and affixed her signature to them. "Your business is concluded," she said. "Oh and one more thing, about the mayor..."
"Well, what of him?"
Madame Victurnien smiled in the way that gossips do when the puzzles of their garbled information suddenly acquire a thread of explanation. "He was probably the one who fetched that girl, if you know she's in Paris."
The lawyers exchanged astonished looks. "Monsieur Fauchelevent...Jean Valjean?" Marius said at last. "An ex-convict with the heart of an angel..."
"He may as well be," Enjolras said, shaking his head as the enormity of Marius' mistake now dawned on him. "Now we'd better go back to Paris and you had better ask your father-in-law..."
"And make amends! Oh God, what have I done?" Marius groaned. "If Cosette knew...and Tholomyes!"
Enjolras turned back to Madame Victurnien. "As happy as I am to have been of help to you, I think it is you who have done the greater service."
Madame Victurnien scowled at them. "You and your inquiries. Now take your friend away before his voice goes through my ears!"
Enjolras and Marius did not have to be told twice. In a few hours, they were headed back towards Paris, which was now shrouded with rain.
