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And so Claquesous was dead, and Eponine and Gavroche as well. Montparnasse, prowling about the ruins of the barricades for anything worth stealing, had seen Gavroche’s small still figure. Eponine's body he had not seen himself, but Thenardier and Babet, who had since gone underground, had somehow found out and made it known to him. Claquesous' death he understood from silence, as the living Claquesous would have contrived to inform him in one way or another.
He had never really thought he would be the only one left. He had supposed, dimly, that he might go on when Claquesous was dead. And Eponine, well, that was unfortunate indeed; though she had a temper, and there were times when he would have cut her throat as likely as not, she had always had a thoroughly satisfactory way of mentioning how handsome he was. But Gavroche! He did not mourn the gamin, not exactly, but it was a bad business all around when one could not count on Paris supporting the life of its own children!
Montparnasse was not in the habit of thinking. To eat well, to dress well, and all of this with as little effort and as much enjoyment as possible -- that is to say by thieving -- these were his goals. Thinking was work, and as such to be avoided as much as possible.
Unaccountable thoughts intensified in his head. The rose in his buttonhole, its petals gathering the adornment of water droplets in the misting rain: the flower had been born, and by the act of making it into a decoration, it had also died. But it would have died in any case, would it not?
And then there was the old man. In the back of his head all this time had been that old man he had tried to steal from, who had instead knocked him down and then had proceeded to make him a present of both his purse and a sermon about prison. A strong man and an odd one; an old convict, clearly, and also a bourgeois. The contradictions in this character were not something he could puzzle out.
During his reverie, his steps had taken him very near the Rue de l’Homme Arme. The street suited him. It was one of those streets where nobody came, and he felt the need to walk alone, or else with only one or two others whom he could easily master and whose purses he could take, if it came to it.
An old man in workman's clothes was shambling down the street. With the ease of long habit, Montparnasse studied him. His head was down; he walked hunched over, as if he were very tired. He had no hat. There was an umbrella under his arm, which despite the weather he had not opened. A simple-minded one, apparently, and an easy mark, no question.
Two things stopped him. The first was remembering the old man who had subdued him. The second was realizing that this man was the same one.
“You!” he said aloud.
The old man looked at him without recognition. His eyes were dull, the intensity Montparnasse remembered from their previous encounter gone. The wrinkles on his thin neck were painful to see.
“What are you doing here?” the thief said with distaste.
The old man shook his head. “I shall never see her again, so it matters not,” he said quietly. “Yes, I remember you. You attempted to steal from me. At that time I had a large purse which I was able to give you. Now, I have no purse and only a few sous. Here.”
Looking at the three sous in the shaking palm of the old man, less money than Montparnasse himself had in his pocket, the young man was immediately catapulted into a state of roiling rage. This was uncommon. To kill casually and to steal without thought were his normal modes of operation. Strong feelings of any sort were unusual for him, and he felt off-balance both from the emotion and the unexpected violence of it.
Dimly he was aware that it made him angry that there was such a change in the man, and all for nothing, from his words for a mere grisette; somehow, though he could not have articulated how, his reaction was bound up in his feelings about Gavroche’s death, and Eponine’s, and the rose in his buttonhole, and the rain falling around them. He even thought briefly that he was angry the old man had no sermon for him, though why this should be he did not know.
“Start walking, old man,” he said. The man obediently and laboriously started to walk. The effort the old man was expending, the slight sheen of sweat on his brow produced by this simple act, made Montparnasse furious all over again. “I don’t want your money. Not this money, anyway. Where do you live? God! I’ll steal from your house, you must have more than three sous in your room.”
“I don’t think I do,” the other objected mildly, but he led Montparnasse to his house and up the stairs. Montparnasse found himself looking at the old man's room. It was sparsely furnished, with a lonely plate of an unappetizing-looking meal on the table, and silver candlesticks on the mantel. That was better, thought the thief, scrutinizing the candlesticks. Worth two hundred francs at least, if he was any judge. He raised his hand to take them. The old man was too weak to stop him now, and only made a wheezing, choking sound. Montparnasse turned around, the candlesticks tucked under his arm, mildly curious as to what protest the man would make.
The old man was laughing.
“Of course,” he said, in a voice that was frail but somehow held Montparnasse temporarily rooted to the spot, “I see it now. They were only lent to me by the Bishop for a time. Very well, take them. I do not think I have the authority to dispose of souls, but what I do have I give you: I know you can use these to become an honest man."
Montparnasse stared at him. Then, clutching the candlesticks, he fled.
*
Montparnasse went to the Rue de l'Homme Arme the next day.
The old man might have more for him to take, he told himself. He had given him the candlesticks, after all. Although Montparnasse had not sold the candlesticks, as he had intended; a good situation had not presented itself. And besides there was that odd comment about his soul, though the young thief dismissed it from his mind. The old man was full of strange remarks, that much was clear.
The old man was outside again. Apparently he had finished his walk, as he was climbing the stairs to his house. Montparnasse casually fell into step behind him.
Without turning around, the old man said, "I never returned to the Bishop. I wore black for him when he died."
Montparnasse fancied that by now he was used to the old man's bizarre sayings, but he sighed loudly to indicate that he had heard, that he was not impressed by the man's ramblings, and that he was not interested in attacking him for three sous, at least not today.
The old man said nothing more on the stairs, but he left the door open behind him. Montparnasse went in.
On the table was what appeared to be the same frugal meal the young thief had seen yesterday: some cabbage, a few potatoes with a little pork. “What’s the use of being a bourgeois if you eat like this?” he muttered. The sad little plate had an air as if it had been there some time. “Eat, old man,” he snapped. He made a movement as if to cuff the other man, but stopped short of doing so.
The other looked at him with a benevolent smile that made Montparnasse clench his teeth in rage. “I did.”
“The plate is still full,” Montparnasse said. “I shall wait here.” He crossed his arms.
Why did he care whether the old man ate or not? It did not matter why he did, only that he ate. He thought of Gavroche, ravenously devouring a hunk of bread, and thrust the memory down.
Obediently, under his glare, the old man ate half of the potatoes and a little of the cabbage. "I suppose that will do, old man," Montparnasse said grudgingly.
"You had better call me Jean," the man said. "And you?"
"Montparnasse."
*
Montparnasse came back the next day. The old man — Jean — was sitting at his table, absently looking out the window, pushing the potatoes around on his plate. He had apparently eaten the cabbage this time, Montparnasse noted with a kind of grim satisfaction.
"Why — all this?" Montparnasse asked, flicking a finger at Jean and his potatoes. He did not know how to say what he meant.
"I have a daughter," the old man said. "Cosette. Euphrasie, I must call her now, or Madame. She was married recently."
It was a daughter he pined for, not a lover. Not that any lover was worth pining about, certainly not Eponine's big eyes and dirty face. Montparnasse prowled around the room, glancing around in an automatic reflex to check the premises for valuable items. There was not much to see, now that the candlesticks were gone. "And the husband?"
The old man’s face contorted. Montparnasse did not understand what produced the feeling, but he knew what it was, and an answering emotion swelled in him.
He wanted to stomp on the man. He wanted to knife him. He wanted to knock him to the ground the same way the old man had done to him.
Their eyes met. And Montparnasse knew, without knowing how he knew, that the old man understood all these things.
He did none of them.
It was nothing to him if an old man who had once knocked him down decided to die of a broken heart, was it? It was nothing to do with the death of gamins and roses in the rain. “Eat,” he said harshly.
*
“You see, the black jet comes from England, the white jet comes from Norway," Jean said.
This was the second week Montparnasse had come to see Jean. As his health improved, Jean had gotten in the habit of speaking a little more to Montparnasse. Sometimes he brooded on his time in prison — at Toulon, he elaborated, without seeming to realize he was doing so. Sometimes the old man would talk of a bishop who had clearly influenced him deeply, though Montparnasse had no use for such creatures.
And today Jean was reminiscing on his days as an industrialist, making — of all things — imitation black jet and glass trinkets. "Old man," Montparnasse jeered, "you're terrible at explaining yourself."
"Look, here is a picture." Jean drew rapidly on a sheet of paper. "The clasp: instead of soldering it, like so, you bend it. It is much cheaper to produce this way."
"I see," Montparnasse said, leaning over the paper, interested despite himself. Although he did not often think of it, his father had been a metalworker before he died and left the family penniless. "The metal that holds the jet, how is it put together? If you pinched it, like the clasp is pinched, and not like the, the loop —" His fingers made an involuntary ellipsoidal motion in the air.
Jean settled back in his chair, his eyebrow raised. Montparnasse felt a little uneasy at his regard. “Claws instead of a bezel, ah. We never tried that, but the idea has merit. If you could write it up, I could try — the industry still survives in Montreuil-sur-Mer, I am sure I could find someone who would be willing to listen to your idea —"
Montparnasse looked away, scowling. Jean caught the look.
"You do not know how to write?" Jean asked. "Nor read? Ah, yes, I should have known; neither did I, when I was your age. I learned in the galleys, you know. I thought thereby to visit revenge on all who had harmed me."
"Did you?" the younger man asked.
Jean smiled briefly. Montparnasse was unaccountably pleased by the smile. The old man was getting better, he thought.
"I did not. Retribution is for God, and all that I did by wishing ill on others was to harm myself. But come," Jean said. "Sit down. Let me teach you, as I was taught." He reached for a sheet of paper, started writing letters on it.
Montparnasse hesitated. The old man would certainly only turn it into another excuse for a homily, he knew. But the letters beckoned him.
He sat.
*
"Je ne vous condamnerai pas non plus. Allez-vous-en, et à l’avenir ne péchez plus," Montparnasse read laboriously, a number of days later.
"Much better," Jean praised him.
Montparnasse preened very slightly. Of course the old man couldn't resist the opportunity to make the lessons into a sort of sermon; he wasn't stupid, was he? But he had advanced quickly. Reading was something he had not imagined it to be. It was a sort of power. He had imagined that being handsome and well-dressed, the effect he had on women, that this was the power of greatest import. But the knowledge that he could extract information from any book in the world: there was a headiness in that, an authority, that he had not hitherto known.
And Jean himself was looking stronger. Montparnasse did not care about that, of course —
There was a knock at the door, the first Montparnasse had ever heard during his visits.
"Leave it," Jean said, a frown beginning on his face. "Or tell whoever it is that I have gone away."
Curious, despite himself — who else would come here? — Montparnasse went to the door. A bourgeois chambermaid, Montparnasse thought, giving her a smile that was almost a sneer. She widened her eyes at seeing Montparnasse, but otherwise made no sign. “My mistress, Madame Euphrasie Pontmercy, wishes to know if Monsieur Fauchelevent is here,” the woman said, in Montparnasse’s opinion much too haughtily.
“No,” Montparnasse said shortly. “He has gone away.”
The chambermaid nodded. "Thank you, Monsieur."
As he watched her leave, he struggled within himself. What was the girl to him, Jean’s daughter, this Euphrasie, this Cosette? She should not have him. He had already told the chambermaid Jean was not there. Jean was mending, as if he cared about that.
“The girl doesn’t want him,” he said within himself. “If she had, she would never have let him go.”
He fought, internally. The old man was nothing to him. Jean, he called himself. One might as well say Jean-le-Cric, for the strength he had displayed at their first meeting.
In an instant of time, he called out, “Mademoiselle.”
The chambermaid, who had not gone quite out of view, turned.
His voice went on, almost without his willing it. “Tell your mistress that he is here and wishes to see her. Tell her that he is ill and needs her care.”
*
When Montparnasse came back the next day, he had barely bullied Jean into eating a few bites of his meal when there was a knock on the door. He went to open it. A young woman, charming in a lovely dress of tea-colored moire antique, rushed past him into the room.
Montparnasse remained at the threshold, leaning against the casing of the door. A man about his age, who might have been handsome if not for his dull expression and terrible taste in clothes, joined him there and watched him suspiciously. A pompous sheep, Montparnasse thought, sneering at the man in his badly-cut suit.
“Cosette!” said Jean, and he rose in his chair, his arms stretched out and trembling, haggard, livid, terrible, with immense joy in his eyes.
“Oh! Father!” said Cosette. Montparnasse noted with some disgust that she was clinging to his breast as if she cared for him, as if she had not left him to the tender mercies of ruffians off the street. “Dear father! You have been sick, and we did not know it. Oh! How cold your hand is! Now, now, you will see, I will not let you go away for so long any more. Your room is still in our house."
The dull young man who had come in with Cosette muttered, "I do not know if this is best. If we had only left him alone a while longer —"
Montparnasse crossed his arms and gave his best scowl to Monsieur Pomposity, who was clearly the son-in-law Jean had mentioned, and who appeared to disapprove of both Montparnasse and Jean as much as Montparnasse disapproved of him. "And what is your problem, eh? That he was a convict?"
His bluntness seemed to startle M. Pomposity, who then had the grace to look a little ashamed. "Well, there are other things. This convict robbed a notable manufacturer and benefactor, M. Madeleine. And he killed the officer Javert; he killed him with a pistol. I, who am now speaking to you, I was present."
Montparnasse knew that Jean had not killed Javert; Thenardier had even showed him the clippings from the Moniteur, though at the time they had meant nothing to him. And Jean's knowledge of manufacturing was so great that the easiest explanation was for him to have been this M. Madeleine.
He thought that he understood how things were, now. The son-in-law had known Jean was a convict. Probably Jean himself had told him, given his apparent eagerness to give the information away to Montparnasse. But he had speculated incorrectly about Javert and M. Madeleine, and Jean had not disabused him. If he were to be told otherwise, he would probably welcome Jean with open arms.
His face contorted with anger. That pompous wretch did not deserve the old man. He did not deserve to know the truth.
Were he to disabuse M. Pomposity of his mistaken apprehensions, he would take the old man away, and quite likely Montparnasse himself would never see him again. But were he to say nothing, the son-in-law would most likely depart without Jean, and convince the daughter to do so as well. Jean and Montparnasse would never be troubled by them again. Jean would learn he could live without them. He almost might prefer to live without such a pretentious fool.
It was decided, then. He would say nothing.
He glanced back at Jean's transfigured countenance as the old man gazed at his daughter, who was twittering some nonsense about strawberries. For some reason Gavroche's impish smile came to his mind, the rain falling on it in the twilight.
Montparnasse spoke before he could think better of it. "He did not kill Javert. Javert killed Javert. He was found drowned. And I would venture to say that Monsieur, er, Jean — that he was M. Madeleine as well."
The other man stared at him. "Prove it! Prove it!"
Montparnasse retorted, "As for Javert, it was in the papers. Everyone knows it. You are a man of means; you can find out these things. Ask the police, ask anyone, find the paper with his obituary. As for being a noted manufacturer and benefactor, why, ask the old man about jet production." He shuddered theatrically.
"That is not proof."
"Ask him directly, then." Montparnasse jerked his head in Jean's direction. "Do you think he would lie to you? Him?"
M. Pomposity's eyes were wide. "You are right," he muttered. Awkwardly, his hands clasped behind him, he moved to where Jean was seated, asked him a question in a voice no louder than a murmur. At Jean's answer, he fell to his knees in front of the old man
Montparnasse could see there was no more for him here. Grimly he withdrew from the happy tableau.
*
Montparnasse swore to himself that he would never return. A silent house on a deserted street: what was there for him now? Certainly Jean himself would not be there, now that his daughter had come for him, now that Monsieur Pomposity apparently venerated his father-in-law as he should.
He supposed he could make inquiries into where the daughter and son-in-law lived, but something in him hesitated at making his connections aware of the trio, or even of contacting those other denizens of the underworld whom he had not seen now in some time.
He would do as he had always done, he thought: steal and kill, without thinking, without caring, to live in the style he desired, alone. But somehow this seemed less appealing than it had previously.
And still he had not sold the candlesticks. He noted with distaste that the cuffs of his trousers were fraying slightly. In the past he would have immediately sold the candlesticks, or robbed an suitable victim, in order to obtain the money for a new coat.
He did neither of these things.
Instead, despite himself, he found his footsteps heading towards the Rue de l’Homme Arme.
He went up the stairs and opened the door.
Jean had been looking out the window, and turned as he entered. “I had hoped I might see you again,” Jean said gently to him.
“You’re not supposed to be here, old man,” Montparnasse snapped. “You can’t fool me, see? I know you have a place with your daughter.”
Jean shrugged. “It is true that Cosette and Marius have a place for me. It is true that all is forgiven, and that I am staying with them from now on. But, you know, it could easily have happened that I would have died before they had come. Or if they had sent me away again — I think perhaps I would not have survived that.”
Montparnasse was silent.
Jean continued, almost apologetically, “And of course we never finished the reading lessons. And I thought — well. I have been coming here sometimes, in the afternoon. In case you might come.”
Montparnasse crossed his arms. “Well, well,” he grumbled, “if you want to talk about imitation jet beads, I suppose I won’t shut you up.”
The old man smiled at him.