Les Misérables - Volume I - Fantine

Classic from the year 2009 in the subject French Studies - Literature language: English abstract: BOOK THIRD. IN THE YEAR 1817***CHAPTER I. IN THE YEAR 1817***1817 is the year which Louis XVIII. with a certain royal assurance which was not wanting in pride entitled the twenty-second of his reign. It is the year in which M. Bruguiere de Sorsum was celebrated. All the hairdressers' shops hoping for powder and the return of the royal bird were besmeared with azure and decked with fleurs-de-lys. It was the candid time at which Count Lynch sat every Sunday as church-warden in the church-warden's pew of Saint-Germain-des-Pres in his costume of a peer of France with his red ribbon and his long nose and the majesty of profile peculiar to a man who has performed a brilliant action. The brilliant action performed by M. Lynch was this: being mayor of Bordeaux on the 12th of March 1814 he had surrendered the city a little too promptly to M. the Duke d'Angouleme. Hence his peerage. In 1817 fashion swallowed up little boys of from four to six years of age in vast caps of morocco leather with ear-tabs resembling Esquimaux mitres. The French army was dressed in white after the mode of the Austrian; the regiments were called legions; instead of numbers they bore the names of departments; Napoleon was at St. Helena; and since England refused him green cloth he was having his old coats turned.[...]***BOOK FOURTH. TO CONFIDE IS SOMETIMES TO DELIVER INTO A PERSON'S POWER***CHAPTER I. ONE MOTHER MEETS ANOTHER MOTHER***There was at Montfermeil near Paris during the first quarter of this century a sort of cook-shop which no longer exists. This cook-shop was kept by some people named Thenardier husband and wife. It was situated in Boulanger Lane. Over the door there was a board nailed flat against the wall. Upon this board was painted something which resembled a man carrying another man on his back the latter wearing the big gilt epaulettes of a general wit