1.F.5.1. THE HISTORY OF A PROGRESS IN BLACK GLASS TRINKETS
AND in the meantime, what had become of that mother who
according to the people at Montfermeil, seemed to have abandoned
her child? Where was she? What was she doing?
After leaving her little Cosette with the Thenardiers, she
had continued her journey, and had reached M. sur M.
This, it will be remembered, was in 1818.
Fantine had quitted her province ten years before. M. sur
M. had changed its aspect. While Fantine had been slowly
descending from wretchedness to wretchedness, her native
town had prospered.
About two years previously one of those industrial facts
which are the grand events of small districts had taken place.
This detail is important, and we regard it as useful to
develop it at length; we should almost say, to underline it.
From time immemorial, M. sur M. had had for its special
industry the imitation of English jet and the black glass
trinkets of Germany. This industry had always vegetated, on
account of the high price of the raw material, which reacted
on the manufacture. At the moment when Fantine returned
to M. sur M., an unheard-of transformation had taken place
in the production of "black goods." Towards the close of
1815 a man, a stranger, had established himself in the town,
and had been inspired with the idea of substituting, in this
manufacture, gum-lac for resin, and, for bracelets in particular,
slides of sheet-iron simply laid together, for slides of
soldered sheet-iron.
This very small change had effected a revolution.
This very small change had, in fact, prodigiously reduced
the cost of the raw material, which had rendered it possible
in the first place, to raise the price of manufacture, a benefit
to the country; in the second place, to improve the workmanship,
an advantage to the consumer; in the third place, to sell
at a lower price, while trebling the profit, which was a benefit
to the manufacturer.
Thus three results ensued from one idea.
In less than three years the inventor of this process had
become rich, which is good, and had made every one about him
rich, which is better. He was a stranger in the Department.
Of his origin, nothing was known; of the beginning of his
career, very little. It was rumored that he had come to town
with very little money, a few hundred francs at the most.
It was from this slender capital, enlisted in the service of
an
ingenious idea, developed by method and thought, that he had
drawn his own fortune, and the fortune of the whole countryside.
On
his arrival at M. sur M. he had only the garments, the
appearance, and the language of a workingman.
It appears that on the very day when he made his obscure
entry into the little town of M. sur M., just at nightfall,
on a December evening, knapsack on back and thorn club in
hand, a large fire had broken out in the town-hall. This man
had rushed into the flames and saved, at the risk of his own
life, two children who belonged to the captain of the gendarmerie;
this is why they had forgotten to ask him for his passport.
Afterwards they had learned his name. He was called
Father Madeleine.
