第二四九章 第一卷 风的恶作剧
第一卷 风的恶作剧
自一八二三年起，蒙费梅的那家客栈便渐渐沉没，不是沉入破产的深渊，而是沉入细小债务的泥沼，泰纳迪埃夫妇又添了两个孩子，全是男孩。这样便有了五个孩子，两个女孩，三个男孩。
泰纳迪埃大娘在最小的两个孩子还很小很幼嫩的时候，竟极其走运地把他们打发出了门。
“打发出门”这个词用得恰当。那妇人身上只有一点点母性。这种现象并非绝无仅有。如同拉莫特-乌当库尔元帅夫人，泰纳迪埃只对女儿有母性。她的母爱到此为止。她对人类的仇恨是从自己的儿子开始的。她对自己的儿子，凶残的本性毫不妥协，她的心在这方面有一道阴森的墙。正如读者所见，她讨厌老大，她诅咒那两个小的。为什么？因为。最可怕的动机，最无法辩驳的回答——因为。“我不需要一窝哭闹的小崽子，”这个母亲说。
我们来解释一下泰纳迪埃夫妇是如何成功地打发出门最后两个孩子的，甚至从这桩交易中捞到了好处。
几页前提到的那位马农大妈，正是那位成功地让老吉诺曼供养她的两个孩子的女人。她住在塞莱斯坦河滨道，就在小麝香街的拐角，这条老街给了她机会，让她能把坏名声变成好气味。读者或许还记得三十五年前肆虐巴黎塞纳河沿岸地区的那场严重的哮吼疫情，科学界借此机会大规模试验了明矾吸入疗法的疗效，如今已被外用碘酊更有效地取代了。在那场疫情中，马农大妈的两个儿子都死了，都还非常小，一个死在早晨，另一个死在同一天的晚上。这是一个打击。这两个孩子对母亲来说很宝贵，它们每月能带来八十法郎。这八十法郎是由吉诺曼先生名下，通过他的收租人、西西里王街的退休法警巴尔日先生准时支付的。孩子死了，收入也没了。马农大妈想了个办法。在她所属的那个邪恶黑暗的共济会里，一切都知道，秘密都保守，大家互相帮助。马农需要两个孩子，泰纳迪埃家有俩。同性别，同年龄。对一方来说是笔好交易，对另一方来说是笔好投资。泰纳迪埃的两个小子成了马农的两个小子。马农离开了塞莱斯坦河滨道，搬到克洛什佩尔斯街去住。在巴黎，从一条街搬到另一条街，一个人与自身的身份联系就断了。
户籍处毫不知情，没有提出任何异议，这场掉包就这样极其简单地完成了。只是，泰纳迪埃对她的孩子提出每月十法郎的出借费，马农答应了，也确实付了。不用说，吉诺曼先生继续履行他的协议。他每半年来看看孩子们，没有察觉变化。“先生，”马农对他说，“他们多像您啊！”
对泰纳迪埃来说，改头换面是家常便饭，他抓住这个机会变成了容德雷特。他的两个女儿和伽弗洛什几乎没有时间发现他们还有两个小弟弟。当贫困达到一定程度时，人会被一种幽灵般的冷漠所压倒，把活人看作幽灵。你最近的亲人，对你来说往往不过是模糊的影子，在人生朦胧的背景上勉强勾勒出轮廓，很容易再次与无形之物混为一谈。
在把两个孩子交给马农的那天晚上，泰纳迪埃大娘曾明确打算永远放弃他们，当时她感到，或者说似乎感到一阵内疚。她对丈夫说：“可这是抛弃我们的孩子啊！” 泰纳迪埃，专横而冷静，用这句话烧灼了内疚：“让-雅克·卢梭做得更绝！” 从内疚，母亲进而转为不安：“可万一警察来找我们麻烦呢？告诉我，泰纳迪埃先生，我们做的事允许吗？” 泰纳迪埃回答：“一切都是允许的。没有人会看出破绽。再说，谁会有兴趣去盯着一个子儿都没有的孩子呢？”
马农在犯罪圈子里算是那种赶时髦的女人。她讲究穿着。她和一个狡猾的、归化法国的英国女贼合住一套房子，房子里摆设得既做作又寒酸。这个英国女人入了巴黎籍，由非常富有的亲戚推荐，与图书馆的奖章和玛尔斯小姐的钻石关系密切，后来在司法记录中出了名。人们叫她“米斯小姐”。
落到马农手里的两个小家伙没有理由抱怨他们的命运。有那八十法郎作保，他们得到了很好的照顾，就像一切能从中获利的东西一样；他们穿得不差，吃得也不差，几乎被当成“小少爷”对待——比他们的亲妈对待他们还好。马农装出一副贵妇派头，当着他们的面从不说黑话。
这样过了几年。泰纳迪埃觉得前景不错。有一天，他偶然对马农说，那时她正把每月十法郎的租金交给他：“做父亲的得给他们点教育才行。”
突然之间，这两个可怜的孩子，此前一直被他们那邪恶的命运保护得还算不错，被猛地抛进了生活，不得不自己开始过日子。
一次大规模的罪犯逮捕行动，就像容德雷特那间阁楼里的那次一样，必然会伴随着审问和随后的关押，这对那个在公开社会之下生存的可怕而隐蔽的反社会来说，是一场真正的灾难；这样一次惊险事件在那个阴暗的世界里会引发各种灾祸。泰纳迪埃的灾祸牵涉到了马农的灾祸。
在马农把有关普吕梅街的那张字条交给爱波妮后不久的一天，警察对克洛什佩尔斯街进行了一次突然搜查；马农被抓了，米斯小姐也被抓了；整栋房子的人都可疑，全被一网打尽。当时，两个小男孩正在后院玩耍，完全没看到搜捕。等他们想进屋时，发现门锁着，房子空了。对面一个修鞋匠把他们叫过去，交给他们一张纸，是“他们妈妈”留给他们的。纸上有个地址：西西里王街八号，收租人巴尔日先生。鞋摊老板对他们说：“你们不能再住这儿了。去那儿吧。不远，左边第一条街。拿着这张纸问路。”
孩子们出发了，大的领着小的，手里拿着那张指引他们的纸。天很冷，他冻僵的小手指捏不紧，没能好好抓住那张纸。在克洛什佩尔斯街的拐角，一阵风把纸从他手里吹走了，天快黑了，孩子再也找不到了。
他们开始漫无目的地在街上游荡。
Since 1823, when the tavern of Montfermeil was on the way to shipwreck
and was being gradually engulfed, not in the abyss of a bankruptcy, but
in the cesspool of petty debts, the Thénardier pair had had two other
children; both males. That made five; two girls and three boys.
Madame Thénardier had got rid of the last two, while they were still
young and very small, with remarkable luck.
_Got rid of_ is the word. There was but a mere fragment of nature in
that woman. A phenomenon, by the way, of which there is more than one
example extant. Like the Maréchale de La Mothe-Houdancourt, the
Thénardier was a mother to her daughters only. There her maternity
ended. Her hatred of the human race began with her own sons. In the
direction of her sons her evil disposition was uncompromising, and her
heart had a lugubrious wall in that quarter. As the reader has seen,
she detested the eldest; she cursed the other two. Why? Because. The
most terrible of motives, the most unanswerable of retorts—Because. “I
have no need of a litter of squalling brats,” said this mother.
Let us explain how the Thénardiers had succeeded in getting rid of
their last two children; and even in drawing profit from the operation.
The woman Magnon, who was mentioned a few pages further back, was the
same one who had succeeded in making old Gillenormand support the two
children which she had had. She lived on the Quai des Célestins, at the
corner of this ancient street of the Petit-Musc which afforded her the
opportunity of changing her evil repute into good odor. The reader will
remember the great epidemic of croup which ravaged the river districts
of the Seine in Paris thirty-five years ago, and of which science took
advantage to make experiments on a grand scale as to the efficacy of
inhalations of alum, so beneficially replaced at the present day by the
external tincture of iodine. During this epidemic, the Magnon lost both
her boys, who were still very young, one in the morning, the other in
the evening of the same day. This was a blow. These children were
precious to their mother; they represented eighty francs a month. These
eighty francs were punctually paid in the name of M. Gillenormand, by
collector of his rents, M. Barge, a retired tip-staff, in the Rue du
Roi-de-Sicile. The children dead, the income was at an end. The Magnon
sought an expedient. In that dark free-masonry of evil of which she
formed a part, everything is known, all secrets are kept, and all lend
mutual aid. Magnon needed two children; the Thénardiers had two. The
same sex, the same age. A good arrangement for the one, a good
investment for the other. The little Thénardiers became little Magnons.
Magnon quitted the Quai des Célestins and went to live in the Rue
Clocheperce. In Paris, the identity which binds an individual to
himself is broken between one street and another.
The registry office being in no way warned, raised no objections, and
the substitution was effected in the most simple manner in the world.
Only, the Thénardier exacted for this loan of her children, ten francs
a month, which Magnon promised to pay, and which she actually did pay.
It is unnecessary to add that M. Gillenormand continued to perform his
compact. He came to see the children every six months. He did not
perceive the change. “Monsieur,” Magnon said to him, “how much they
resemble you!”
Thénardier, to whom avatars were easy, seized this occasion to become
Jondrette. His two daughters and Gavroche had hardly had time to
discover that they had two little brothers. When a certain degree of
misery is reached, one is overpowered with a sort of spectral
indifference, and one regards human beings as though they were
spectres. Your nearest relations are often no more for you than vague
shadowy forms, barely outlined against a nebulous background of life
and easily confounded again with the invisible.
On the evening of the day when she had handed over her two little ones
to Magnon, with express intention of renouncing them forever, the
Thénardier had felt, or had appeared to feel, a scruple. She said to
her husband: “But this is abandoning our children!” Thénardier,
masterful and phlegmatic, cauterized the scruple with this saying:
“Jean Jacques Rousseau did even better!” From scruples, the mother
proceeded to uneasiness: “But what if the police were to annoy us? Tell
me, Monsieur Thénardier, is what we have done permissible?” Thénardier
replied: “Everything is permissible. No one will see anything but true
blue in it. Besides, no one has any interest in looking closely after
children who have not a sou.”
Magnon was a sort of fashionable woman in the sphere of crime. She was
careful about her toilet. She shared her lodgings, which were furnished
in an affected and wretched style, with a clever gallicized English
thief. This English woman, who had become a naturalized Parisienne,
recommended by very wealthy relations, intimately connected with the
medals in the Library and Mademoiselle Mar’s diamonds, became
celebrated later on in judicial accounts. She was called _Mamselle
Miss_.
The two little creatures who had fallen to Magnon had no reason to
complain of their lot. Recommended by the eighty francs, they were well
cared for, as is everything from which profit is derived; they were
neither badly clothed, nor badly fed; they were treated almost like
“little gentlemen,”—better by their false mother than by their real
one. Magnon played the lady, and talked no thieves’ slang in their
presence.
Thus passed several years. Thénardier augured well from the fact. One
day, he chanced to say to Magnon as she handed him his monthly stipend
of ten francs: “The father must give them some education.”
All at once, these two poor children, who had up to that time been
protected tolerably well, even by their evil fate, were abruptly hurled
into life and forced to begin it for themselves.
A wholesale arrest of malefactors, like that in the Jondrette garret,
necessarily complicated by investigations and subsequent
incarcerations, is a veritable disaster for that hideous and occult
counter-society which pursues its existence beneath public society; an
adventure of this description entails all sorts of catastrophes in that
sombre world. The Thénardier catastrophe involved the catastrophe of
Magnon.
One day, a short time after Magnon had handed to Éponine the note
relating to the Rue Plumet, a sudden raid was made by the police in the
Rue Clocheperce; Magnon was seized, as was also Mamselle Miss; and all
the inhabitants of the house, which was of a suspicious character, were
gathered into the net. While this was going on, the two little boys
were playing in the back yard, and saw nothing of the raid. When they
tried to enter the house again, they found the door fastened and the
house empty. A cobbler opposite called them to him, and delivered to
them a paper which “their mother” had left for them. On this paper
there was an address: _M. Barge, collector of rents, Rue du
Roi-de-Sicile, No_. 8. The proprietor of the stall said to them: “You
cannot live here any longer. Go there. It is nearby. The first street
on the left. Ask your way from this paper.”
The children set out, the elder leading the younger, and holding in his
hand the paper which was to guide them. It was cold, and his benumbed
little fingers could not close very firmly, and they did not keep a
very good hold on the paper. At the corner of the Rue Clocheperce, a
gust of wind tore it from him, and as night was falling, the child was
not able to find it again.
They began to wander aimlessly through the streets.
