"Anne Gautier, Elise Jacquemin and Cosette Javert, please remain in your seats. The rest of the class may leave."
It must have taken the children little more than a minute to surge out of the schoolroom. Once the banging of desk lids and the scraping of chairs had subsided and the last straggler had rushed out to play in the Friday snow Mlle Martin turned to the three girl and fixed them with a look which might have been mistaken for righteousness but which was really closer to what the Germans term schadenfreude.
"For your misbehaviour you will all stay behind and write two-hundred times the lines I am going to give you. Anne and Cosette, I will be telling your fathers. As for you Elise, I shall tell your mother. Or - " with a look of such frank sadism that even the children blanched, " - perhaps I shall tell Cosette's father."
Mlle Martin drew two lines down the blackboard and handed each of the children a piece of chalk.
"Elise, you shall write 'Ladies never fight'. Anne, you shall write 'Nobody likes a bully'. And Cosette, I would like you to write out two-hundred times 'Nobody likes a telltale'. When you are finished you may leave - mind you shut the door properly behind you." So saying, she perched her faded black bonnet on her head and swept out the door.
Cosette looked horrified and Elise even worse than horrified. When her mother was angry she threw pans (her aim was legendary, nearly as good as M Madeleine with a rifle). She had no idea what M Javert was like when angry and even less desire to find out.
Seeing their terror, Anne said with a smiling, cocksure air, "Oh don't worry. She always says she'll tell - she never does."
This somewhat reassured Cosette and Elise - after all, Anne Gautier was always in trouble and therefore in a position to know. Anne then began to chat merrily about the time Mlle Martin had caught her doing something or other that she shouldn't have been and hit her so hard she broke the ruler. " - it just went flying 'cross the classroom. I woulda laughed that hard if she hadn't just walloped me one!"
It seemed there were no hard feelings from the morning's incident. It had began as one of those childish "My dad's better than you dad" arguments than Anne, daughter of a prosperous butcher, was forever indulging in. She had long given up trying to start them with Cosette - saying your father was Inspector Javert was rather in the same league as saying he was Lucifer, Prince of Hell and tended to finish the argument. With Elise Jacquemin, however, there was plenty of scope for Anne's sharp tongue. Germain Jacquemin was something of a town joke and Anne had been especially vicious that morning. So much so that the usually mind mannered Elise had flung herself at Anne, pulling her hair and scratching her face. By the time Mlle Martin intervened Anne Gautier, bleeding and dishevelled, looked very much like the innocent party. Mademoiselle had declared Elise to be a disgrace and that she would be severely punished for it. Which, in Cosette's eyes, was unfair. Being an honest child, and one who had been brought up by Javert to 'always do what you think is right' and 'tell the truth and shame the devil' she told her teacher the full story. She was fully prepared for Anne to hate her, for the inevitable pinching and hair pulling that would follow. What she was not prepared for was Mlle Martin's reaction, how she had called Cosette a disgusting little sneak and punished her along with her friends. The look of disgust on the schoolteacher's face had confused Cosette, as had the words - 'nasty little mouchard's bitch' - she had heard her hiss.
Anne finished her lines quickly, with a practised ease, grabbed her slate and ran out the door. Cosette finished next and sat down to wait for Elise. Finally Elise reached two-hundred, climbed up on a chair to write 'Elise Jacquemin 5th Jan 1824' at the top of the board and tossed the stub of her chalk into a pot on the desk
"Hurry up Elise, we're late!"
"There's no point hurrying now. We may as well just walk slowly and meet Julie when she finishes at the factory."
Julie was the eldest Jacquemin child. Her father did not like her working in the factory but she wanted to marry in the summer and wished to have some money to set herself up before she did so. Being as determined as her mother, he had not argued long.
The children walked out into the winter street. It was five O'clock and already dark. When they reached the beginning of the esplanade Cosette said: "Oh, Elise, I nearly forgot. Papa gave me a twenty sous piece this morning - and another for you. Why don't I run and get us some fruit bread from Father Papon? You get Julie and I'll meet you in the square"
"Fine - get Julie some too if there's change"
Cosette bough three slices of fruit bread from the elderly baker, M Papon, and then loitered outside the bakery window to wait for her friends. Bored, she crouched down to write her name in the small patch of pristine snow that still remained under the bakery window. She was just debating whether she had space to add Mlle to the beginning of her name when she felt she was being watched and looking up she saw a woman standing in front of her. She was tall and rather thin, wearing a burgundy evening dress soiled at the hem and clutching the end of a loaf of cheap black bread in one hand. Cosette started slightly. There was something about this satin clad scarecrow of a woman and the way she was looking at her that was unnerving.Noticing the child's surprisethe woman crouched down next to Cosette and smiled. It was a nice smile but Cosette noticed she was missing her two front teeth.
"Did your teeth fall out Madame? Don't worry, mine did too - they grow back".
Cosette gestured to the gap in her bottom teeth. The woman laughed throatily and said, "something like that my love, something like that." She then looked down at Cosette's writing in the snow, "Did you write that yourself? It's nice for a girl to be able to write. Can't write a word but my name myself, and I wouldn't know that if I saw it written down. You're the Inspector's daughter, aren't you?"
"Yes - he's not my real Papa though. He said he was going to find my mam but I think he's forgotten"
"And what's you're name?"
"Cosette."
"My little girl is called Cosette! Well, really she's called Euphrasie - Cosette is my pet name for her. She'd be about your age now."
Cosette, always keen to make new friends, had been just about to ask whether this little girl lived in Montrueil and why she didn't come to school when she heard a voice calling her name. Looking up she saw Julie Jacquemin striding across the square looking extremely agitated.
"Cosette! Cosette, come here this instant away from that, that . . . woman"
Cosette hesitated momentarily and Julie marched straight up to them, grabbed her hand and began to pull her away : "Come away now."
The older woman shrank back against the shop front and held out her hands as if in supplication.
"Please Mademoiselle, I meant no harm. I only wanted to talk to the child."
" Women like you have no business talking to innocent children." Julie spat as shedragged Cosette away.
" Why couldn't she talk to me Julie?" Cosette asked, confused.
"Well sweetheart, some woman aren't, they aren't very nice. It's best not to go near them."
"What the Hell!" The woman in the burgundy dress said vehemently as she walked away from the baker's and across the square, "What the Hell do I care?" And what did she care? What was one more petty humiliation in a life that had been replete with them? If some jumped up little snot of a virgin wanted to call her name well, so be it - she'd had worse. It was probably true anyway, she wasn't a nice woman. She had spoken to the child, that was the important thing. Let La Goulue and the others tease her now!
Just off the main square, in a narrow back street known officially as Passage de Zion Exulté and to its nocturnal frequenters as 'Passage des Zizis Exultés'#, a shabby group of women was milling around a charcoal burner.
"Fantine!" called out a stout woman wearing a fur stole that looked as if it had been made from a large ginger tom. "Did you bring the bread?"
"I did indeed Goulue. And I did more than that when I was at the bakers - I spoke to the kid!"
"You never! Oye Marie - Fantine says she Spoke to Old Brimstone's brat! I wonder what her name is. Bet he called her Rule-Book or Police-Post or summat!"
"Her name's Cosette - like my little one. I've done the bet so I've got first call on the brandy bottle now - for a whole wee mind"
"Hey", ventured Marie, a tiny rat of a girl who couldn't have been more than fourteen, "Maybe sheis your little one! Hey girls - our Fantine's been having her wicked way with Inspector Brimstone! Whaddaya say to that?"
"Oooh, what's he like? Big strong man like that - I'm ever so jealous", laughed a red-headed girl.
"Not exactly the kind to keep you warm at night though - if you see what I mean." said an older woman
"Urgh, I know what you mean, Lisette- the very thought makes my blood run cold."
"Though he does have big hands," Marie said with a sly look, "You know what they say about men with big hands . . ."
"Look, are we going to eat or what?" came the commanding voice of La Goulue. "I'm starving"
The women huddled around the brazier and shard out the food between them. After they had eaten they helped each other prepare for the night ahead. They pinched each other's cheeks, adjusted their hair, hiked down their dresses and drank copious amounts of eau-de-vie for warmth and bravado. As they dispersed into the night the older tart, Lisette, remarked grimly: "Let's hope none of us run into Fantine's sweetheart."
Suzette's reservations were to be proved uncannily and unfortunately accurate that evening. At about ten O'clock Fantine was plying her trade outside the officers' café in the square when she attracted the notice of one of the town fops, a not-so-young-buck named Bamatabois. He began by insulting the poor bedraggled harlot, something to which she paid no attention. Since he was drunk enough to believe that his witticism were very witty indeed, he was most insulted when they did not have the desired effect. Clearly more drastic action was called for. He scooped up a handful of snow, crept up behind Fantine and shoved it down between her bare shoulder blades. . Instantly she turned on him, kicking, scratching swearing and punching, terrible, frenzied and hideous. Later, Javert would say that she had attacked society by attacking M Bamatabois and, in a strange way, he was right. Here was the answer to the question, 'What is one more petty insult in a life that has been replete with them?' Soon a crowd had gathered around the pair, laughing, jeering and even making impromptu bets on the tussle's outcome until a tall man broke through the circle and, grabbing hold of the back of the woman's dress, pulled her off her, by now very dazed, victim. The man was, of course, no-one other than our own Inspector Javert. Silently, he lead her away to the Police Post, accompanied by the baying crowd.
#'Zizi' is a slang word for genitalia. 'Éxulté' means, 'exulted' or 'raised high'