A/N Not the most exciting chapter ever, but hey. Lots of OOC-ness on the part of Aunt Gillenormand, for which I apologise (I've thoroughly Granny Weatherwax-ed her!). I make no apologies for Pascale, however, since the only person who ever mentions her is Javert

Pascale Henry has been back in her canteen just long enough to slap the kitchen boy twice when a message arrives for her from Monsieur Gisquet. The bearer of the note is a whey faced clerk to whom Pascale would certainly have offered something to eat ere she not so flustered by this most unusual flurry of communication from the Prefect. Distractedly, she sits down next to the stove to read her message, wondering as to the meaning of it and leaving the poor pen-pusher to go hungry.
She feels a little overcome, and fans herself with the note before reading it. Addressed by Monsieur le Préfet twice in a day! She just isn't used to that sort of attention.
To be honest, Pascale Henry isn't much used to attention of any sort. True, Monsieur Javert sometimes praises her cooking (which Monsieur Daguerre then praises more just to show that whatever could be done by an anti-social gypsy from Pontoise could be done better by an alcoholic Corsican from Place de Chatelet). Also true is that some of the younger officers solicit her advice on matters romantic - to which her response is usually, "Have another pie, dear". Oh, and she sometimes has nice conversations with the man who brings the meat. Other than that . . ?
She is a widow, no living children, makes good pastry. She's never really considered that there might be more to her. She wonders, for the thousandth time, what made M Gisquet ask her to be an irregular agent in the first place. The request had come, quite out of the blue, about three months ago and, at the time, she had been rather pleased by it, if a little baffled. From that day to this she had done little but prepare extra food for large parties of 'gentlemen' from the Surété and the most exciting thing that had happened to her was that Eugene Vidocq had winked at her. Pretty exciting, I'm sure you'd agree (well, I'd be pretty chuffed!), but hardly grand espionage.
Until this morning, when she was plunged into a world of missing policemen, revolutionary Bonapartistes and ineffective letters of mass-destruction. Truth be told, she feels rather inadequate to the task.. Pascale has never really had much to do with spies, dashing master criminals derring-do and the dangerous classes before, what with being the daughter of a haberdasher and all. The closest she had ever come in her unremarkable youth to the forces of crime was when someone tried to give short change in the shop. Then, aged eighteen, Mlle Rouleaux had wed Laurent Henry, and embarked upon an equally unremarkable adulthood. M Henry (who worked as an assistant to the Comte Angles) had been a mild-manner man who had nicknamed his wife "my little partridge" and had died, aged thirty seven, because he absolutely refused to look before he crossed the street, as a result of which he was knocked down by a fiacre.
It isn't exactly the background one expects for a police spy - look at M Vidocq. She isn't even sure if women should do this short of thing. If they should then surely there are broads out there who were a better bet than her. Like that agent 47. Barely sixteen and she had clearly been around a bit. "Been around a bit"? That sounds rather rude, doesn't it? Don't want to cast aspersions on anyone's moral character. Probably better say that she knew her way around. Whatever, the Jondrette lassy clearly possessed a whole set of life skills that had passed Pascale by entirely.
But it isn't Jondrette/no. 47 that really intimidates her. That position is reserved for agent 5. After all, savvy street-urchins are seven a sous, but this woman? This Mathilde Esme? She was truly strange. And she REALLY seemed to know what she was doing. "Which is good," reflects Pascale, "Since I haven't a clue" At first, during the interview, she had simply thought her a querulous upper-class spinster but, afterwards, she had exhibited hidden depths. Pascale had been discussing the disappearance of Monsieur Javert and this Marius fellow, with whom La Jondrette seemed to be acquainted. The Gamine had voiced the opinion that her "Mariuskin" (?) had been kidnapped by Javert, who had finally lost all semblance of the plot and was holding the young man hostage in a rehearsal room at the Comedie Fracaise and attempting to teach him to sing Mozart arias. Whereas Pascale had heard from a number of sources within the prefecture that Javert had been kidnapped by a dangerous international revolutionary who would only release him upon delivery of three and a third million francs, the dismantling of the British and French colonial system and a shrubbery.
Agent 5 had looked at them scornfully and said: "You two are either extremely stupid or have been misinformed by someone who is. For the sake of this mission, I pray to God it's the latter. If I know either of the parties involved it's probably a lot simpler and less exciting that that!" With that she had sprung into a fiacre with surprising agility, barked, "Rue des Filles du Calvaire" at the driver and sped off into the distance.
Pascale is woken from these reveries by the smell of something acrid and oniony - something is burning on the stove. She leaps up, removes the pan from the heat, considers smacking the kitchen-brat over the head with another pan, thinks better of it and sits back down. She picks up the letter, reflecting that it might be good idea to actually read the thing. It says:

"Agent 5 is to go undercover at the notorious haunt of student radicalism, the Café Musain, where a post has been found for her. She is to leave immediately - "

"Café Musain?" she thinks, "Home of student radicalism indeed! Home of very bad pastry, more like! Oh well, at least I can handle the cooking part. Best be off then." She looks at the time on the letter, it is 6.45. The time now is 8.00 and she hopes the prefect has a slightly elastic definition of 'immediately'. Deliberately, she does not read the end of the letter but casts it into the fire, where it does not burn. She puts on her pelerine, grabs her cat, Mistigris, by the scruff of the neck and walks to the door. The she turns back and opens a drawer, from which she withdraws a large rolling pin. Pascale caresses it thoughtfully and then slips it into her bag. After all, one never knows when that sort of thing will come in handy.