Sitting on a bench, swaddled in shawls and with a wrinkled face hidden deep inside the cavernous depths of a black bonnet, an old woman was crumbling a perfectly good loaf of bread for a flock of thankless pigeons that only crowded more and more tightly around the bent figure. Eponine watched the scene from a distance across the public gardens and ignored the pangs of hunger that stabbed through her stomach. The birds were dining better than she would today.
She had lived a year of her life on her back, and not even for profit. That may well change within the near future, for there weren't many professions available for what Eponine had become by the end of her recovery. Her crippled hand meant that honest work was out of the question, as well as most dishonest work. Her emaciated body, never healthy to begin with, had wasted away until she was no more than a grotesque stick drawing of a woman. She would be hard pressed to find a man desperate enough or poor enough that he cared to buy what she had to sell.
The sky was overcast with a springtime rain threatening to tumble down over the heads of the strolling couples at any minute, the trees and grass of the gardens glowed with that unearthly green of new growth that comes after a winter. Eponine stopped to catch her breath against one such tree, clutching at the budding leaves to hold herself upright while she wheezed. It seemed that she couldn't walk ten steps these days without sapping her strength. When her fit had passed, the bedraggled urchin lifted her head and caught sight of a man that she had almost begun to believe had never existed at all.
It was Monsieur Marius.
This man did not walk with the swift gait of the boy she remembered from the Gorbeau tenement, who always wore the same shabby suit and kept his gaze discreetly on the ground in front of him as if in the hope that the favor would be returned by passersby. This man wore a greatcoat of what was surely the most expensive wool and kept his eyes trained not on the ground, but instead on the cane with which he guided his steps. Every now and again, it seemed that he forgot to use the cane at all and walked quite well without it. Not all invalids, as Eponine was, are so eager to abandon and forget their injury, even when the wounds have long since healed. The man was alone and when he did occasionally raise his head, his fine features wore a look of hopelessness.
Standing as still as one of the statues that dotted the park, Eponine watched the boy who she had pinned her every desire onto walk down the path of the garden with the air of a devastated man of twice his years. Oh, there had been a time when she would have chased after him and preened and pranced about him in oblivion to the fact that all he saw was a pitiable child who could barely be qualified as a female, much less claim to be of the same species as his beloved Cosette.
It hadn't mattered that she knew nothing of Marius's life, that he cared nothing to know of her own existence, he had simply been near and been kind and been just another thing in life that was not for Eponine to have. She knew now, with a wisdom that had been gained at no small price, that her girlish infatuation had been less with the man than with what the man might have promised - a warm bed, fine clothes to wear, hot meals, a hand that stroked rather than a hand that struck.
Tucking her bad hand into her ragged shawl to hide it, Eponine turned her back on the disappearing figure of Marius and walked very slowly out of the gardens and back into the embrace of the street.
She had lived a year of her life on her back, and not even for profit. That may well change within the near future, for there weren't many professions available for what Eponine had become by the end of her recovery. Her crippled hand meant that honest work was out of the question, as well as most dishonest work. Her emaciated body, never healthy to begin with, had wasted away until she was no more than a grotesque stick drawing of a woman. She would be hard pressed to find a man desperate enough or poor enough that he cared to buy what she had to sell.
The sky was overcast with a springtime rain threatening to tumble down over the heads of the strolling couples at any minute, the trees and grass of the gardens glowed with that unearthly green of new growth that comes after a winter. Eponine stopped to catch her breath against one such tree, clutching at the budding leaves to hold herself upright while she wheezed. It seemed that she couldn't walk ten steps these days without sapping her strength. When her fit had passed, the bedraggled urchin lifted her head and caught sight of a man that she had almost begun to believe had never existed at all.
It was Monsieur Marius.
This man did not walk with the swift gait of the boy she remembered from the Gorbeau tenement, who always wore the same shabby suit and kept his gaze discreetly on the ground in front of him as if in the hope that the favor would be returned by passersby. This man wore a greatcoat of what was surely the most expensive wool and kept his eyes trained not on the ground, but instead on the cane with which he guided his steps. Every now and again, it seemed that he forgot to use the cane at all and walked quite well without it. Not all invalids, as Eponine was, are so eager to abandon and forget their injury, even when the wounds have long since healed. The man was alone and when he did occasionally raise his head, his fine features wore a look of hopelessness.
Standing as still as one of the statues that dotted the park, Eponine watched the boy who she had pinned her every desire onto walk down the path of the garden with the air of a devastated man of twice his years. Oh, there had been a time when she would have chased after him and preened and pranced about him in oblivion to the fact that all he saw was a pitiable child who could barely be qualified as a female, much less claim to be of the same species as his beloved Cosette.
It hadn't mattered that she knew nothing of Marius's life, that he cared nothing to know of her own existence, he had simply been near and been kind and been just another thing in life that was not for Eponine to have. She knew now, with a wisdom that had been gained at no small price, that her girlish infatuation had been less with the man than with what the man might have promised - a warm bed, fine clothes to wear, hot meals, a hand that stroked rather than a hand that struck.
Tucking her bad hand into her ragged shawl to hide it, Eponine turned her back on the disappearing figure of Marius and walked very slowly out of the gardens and back into the embrace of the street.