1.C.3.1. THE WATER QUESTION AT MONTFERMEIL
MONTFERMEIL is situated between Livry and Chelles, on the
southern edge of that lofty table-land which separates the
Ourcq from the Marne. At the present day it is a tolerably
large town, ornamented all the year through with plaster
villas, and on Sundays with beaming bourgeois. In 1823
there were at Montfermeil neither so many white houses nor
so many well-satisfied citizens: it was only a village in the
forest. Some pleasure-houses of the last century were to be
met with there, to be sure, which were recognizable by their
grand air, their balconies in twisted iron, and their long
windows, whose tiny panes cast all sorts of varying shades of
green on the white of the closed shutters; but Montfermeil
was none the less a village. Retired cloth-merchants and
rusticating attorneys had not discovered it as yet; it was a
peaceful and charming place, which was not on the road to
anywhere: there people lived, and cheaply, that peasant rustic
life which is so bounteous and so easy; only, water was rare
there, on account of the elevation of the plateau.
It was necessary to fetch it from a considerable distance;
the end of the village towards Gagny drew its water from the
magnificent ponds which exist in the woods there. The other
end, which surrounds the church and which lies in the direction
of Chelles, found drinking-water only at a little spring
half-way down the slope, near the road to Chelles, about a
quarter of an hour from Montfermeil.
Thus each household found it hard work to keep supplied
with water. The large houses, the aristocracy, of which the
Thenardier tavern formed a part, paid half a farthing a
bucketful to a man who made a business of it, and who earned
about eight sous a day in his enterprise of supplying Montfermeil
with water; but this good man only worked until
seven o'clock in the evening in summer, and five in winter;
and night once come and the shutters on the ground floor once
closed, he who had no water to drink went to fetch it for
himself or did without it.
This constituted the terror of the poor creature whom the
reader has probably not forgotten,— little Cosette. It will
be remembered that Cosette was useful to the Thenardiers in
two ways: they made the mother pay them, and they made the
child serve them. So when the mother ceased to pay altogether,
the reason for which we have read in preceding chapters,
the Thenardiers kept Cosette. She took the place of a
servant in their house. In this capacity she it was who ran
to fetch water when it was required. So the child, who was
greatly terrified at the idea of going to the spring at night,
took great care that water should never be lacking in the
house.
Christmas of the year 1823 was particularly brilliant at
Montfermeil. The beginning of the winter had been mild;
there had been neither snow nor frost up to that time. Some
mountebanks from Paris had obtained permission of the
mayor to erect their booths in the principal street of the
village, and a band of itinerant merchants, under protection
of the same tolerance, had constructed their stalls on the
Church Square, and even extended them into Boulanger
Alley, where, as the reader will perhaps remember, the Thenardiers'
hostelry was situated. These people filled the inns
and drinking-shops, and communicated to that tranquil little
district a noisy and joyous life. In order to play the part
of a faithful historian, we ought even to add that, among
the curiosities displayed in the square, there was a menagerie,
in which frightful clowns, clad in rags and coming no one
knew whence, exhibited to the peasants of Montfermeil in
1823 one of those horrible Brazilian vultures, such as our
Royal Museum did not possess until 1845, and which have
a tricolored cockade for an eye. I believe that naturalists call
this bird Caracara Polyborus; it belongs to the order of the
Apicides, and to the family of the vultures. Some good old
Bonapartist soldiers, who had retired to the village, went to
see this creature with great devotion. The mountebanks gave
out that the tricolored cockade was a unique phenomenon
made by God expressly for their menagerie.
On Christmas eve itself, a number of men, carters, and
peddlers, were seated at table, drinking and smoking around
four or five candles in the public room of Thenardier's
hostelry. This room resembled all drinking-shop rooms,—
tables, pewter jugs, bottles, drinkers, smokers; but little light
and a great deal of noise. The date of the year 1823 was indicated,
nevertheless, by two objects which were then fashionable
in the bourgeois class: to wit, a kaleidoscope and a lamp of
ribbed tin. The female Thenardier was attending to the
supper, which was roasting in front of a clear fire; her
husband was drinking with his customers and talking
politics.
Besides political conversations which had for their principal
subjects the Spanish war and M. le Duc d'Angouleme, strictly
local parentheses, like the following, were audible amid the
uproar:—
"About Nanterre and Suresnes the vines have flourished
greatly. When ten pieces were reckoned on there have been
twelve. They have yielded a great deal of juice under the
press." "But the grapes cannot be ripe?" "In those parts
the grapes should not be ripe; the wine turns oily as soon as
spring comes." "Then it is very thin wine?" "There are
wines poorer even than these. The grapes must be gathered
while green." Etc.
Or a miller would call out:—
"Are we responsible for what is in the sacks? We find in
them a quantity of small seed which we cannot sift out, and
which we are obliged to send through the mill-stones; there
are tares, fennel, vetches, hempseed, fox-tail, and a host of
other weeds, not to mention pebbles, which abound in certain
wheat, especially in Breton wheat. I am not fond of grinding
Breton wheat, any more than long-sawyers like to saw beams
with nails in them. You can judge of the bad dust that makes
in grinding. And then people complain of the flour. They
are in the wrong. The flour is no fault of ours."
In a space between two windows a mower, who was seated
at table with a landed proprietor who was fixing on a price for
some meadow work to be performed in the spring, was
saying:—
"It does no harm to have the grass wet. It cuts better.
Dew is a good thing, sir. It makes no difference with that
grass. Your grass is young and very hard to cut still. It's
terribly tender. It yields before the iron." Etc.
Cosette was in her usual place, seated on the cross-bar of
the kitchen table near the chimney. She was in rags; her
bare feet were thrust into wooden shoes, and by the firelight
she was engaged in knitting woollen stockings destined for
the young Thenardiers. A very young kitten was playing
about among the chairs. Laughter and chatter were audible
in the adjoining room, from two fresh children's voices: it
was Eponine and Azelma.
In the chimney-corner a cat-o'-nine-tails was hanging on a
nail.
At intervals the cry of a very young child, which was somewhere
in the house, rang through the noise of the dram-shop.
It was a little boy who had been born to the Thenardiers
during one of the preceding winters,— "she did not know
why," she said, "the result of the cold,"— and who was a little
more than three years old. The mother had nursed him, but
she did not love him. When the persistent clamor of the brat
became too annoying, "Your son is squalling," Thenardier
would say; "do go and see what he wants." "Bah!" the
mother would reply, "he bothers me." And the neglected
child continued to shriek in the dark.