#2.3.10

Cosette and the stranger leave, and Thenardier shows his wife the money. Madame is disappointed he didn’t get more. Thenardier runs after them and finally catches up to them. He gives the stranger back his money and says that he’s taking Cosette back. He says that he has a duty to the child’s mother and would only give the child away to someone with written permission from the mother.

The stranger supplies such a note.

Thenardier demands to be paid back all the money Fantine owed him. Even though the stranger reasons that the 1,500 francs was more than enough, Thenardier demands 1,000 crowns.

At long last, this Thenardier section comes to an end, and does so with a bang. Valjean’s putdown of Thenardier is delightful, and so very cathartic after 10 chapters of Thenardier being such a slimy asshole. And it reinforces the theory that Jean Valjean is not being taken advantage of when he overpays, he’s making a choice to overpay as charity.

Anyway, so M shows Mme the money and she, for the first time in their relationship, stands up to him. And it’s effective, in the way that you’re always told picking your battles will be -- the fact that she has never stood up to him before adds weight to her criticism, and actually gets him to change his mind. Like I said before, at this point in their lives they are very much a team. A dreadful team, and one that pretty gleefully ruins lives, but a team nevertheless.

But when Thenardier catches up to Valjean and Cosette, he realizes that Jean Valjean is not actually any kind of pushover. He can be an immovable object, when he chooses to be, and Thenardier is no unstoppable force. He tries all his tricks and none of them work in the slightest, and in the end he’s left with nothing more than what he started with.

We are then treated to a condensed narrative of just how Valjean escaped from the ship and got to Montfermeil. I assume he’s using an alias, because Jean Valjean is a dead man’s name, but we’re not told here what it is. He is once again firmly Jean Valjean in the narration, which may mean that that’s how he’s thinking of himself again. I haven’t really been tracking the correlation between Hugo’s use of names and Jean Valjean’s self-identity.

And we end with Cosette asleep on his back, holding her doll. It’s an absolutely adorable image, and it’s such a stark change from Cosette of the day before. A few chapters back, we were told that fear is so much a part of her life that she’s adopted it into everything she does, and here we get stark proof that Cosette is not afraid. For the first time she can remember, Cosette feels safe.

Thenardier draws up an exaggerated bill and Hugo also compares it to the Congress of Vienna giving a huge bill for France to pay. I like these little bits of history interposed between the pages of the characters’ lives. @akallabeth-joie mentioned characters as symbolisms and I can see that in some way here as well, if Cosette symbolises the future and hope of France, then this is also another Congress of Vienna, this bartering for her in this chapter, while it is obviously also utterly gross on Thenardier’s part.

Anyway, Thenardier draws up a huge bill for Valjean’s stay and Madame Thenardier is jealous of the fact that little Cosette has a new doll. It is probably the fact that the new doll symbolises hope and happiness that Cosette has not known ever since she has lived with the Thenardiers and Madame Thenardier seems to not be able to see Cosette happy, so she is determined to turn her out. I do find it amusing that Madame Thenardier would rather be in bed with Louis XVIII than be willing to keep Cosette for one more day. These chapters are so political and symbolic andt I really love this bit. It’s also funnier if they are as Graham Robb says in the bio, representative of Louis-Napoleon III, which I choose to think that they are, that they would rather collaborate with the monarchists at any turn that they find the things to not be working for them and I’ve been watching Victor Hugo- Enemy of the State and this is sort of what Louis Napoleon does, he has a parliament full of Legitimists who oppose anything sensible that the Republicans or the Moderates like Hugo propose.

But to get back to the story, Thenardier is greedy and raises the rent considerably, I find it amusing that Thenardier is called a brilliant actor and in the next instant tells Valjean that he adores Cosette, which no one would believe, considering everything that Valjean has observed of the situation.

Cosette’s situation is a lot like Valjean’s in prison, and it says so much about her character and the light shining from within her, that she hasn’t lost hope, she hasn’t turned to hatred, and maybe he recognises that in the way he tells Thenardier this. Thenardier meanwhile as @pilferingapples has pointed out before, has considered whether Valjean- this unknown man who probably has no connection to Cosette and has suddenly taken a fancy to her is going to use her/groom her as a child labourer or as a prostitute, it’s also a fate that Eponine and Azelma will share later on and since such things were common, not very surprising for Thenardier to come to that conclusion.

From Cosette’s perspective though Valjean is a saint/angel for her. She only needed one person to treat her kindly, to care for her. She is no longer afraid because there is someone for her and that gives me so much hope for the kind of person she is- very much like Fantine – can deal with the world as long as she has a little help and I know I keep saying that, but I really love her so much. Just the change in her attitude is so remarkable here.

I hate that no one in the town recognises her, now that she is in mourning garb and not in her usual rags, she does seem to be the child whom everyone is used to seeing poor and wretched and she really is very much an Omelas child. But the good news is that Cosette is being rescued from the wicked stepmother and is free to start her life, no wonder she looks at the sky and her big eyes have something else other than fear in them, I’m not surprised she also looks at Valjean as being in the presence of the Good Lord – besides the obvious comparisons to Valjean as Jesus, there has been something of Providence in their first encounter in the woods.

 2.3.10

The Thenardiers’ further greed after having satisfied his debts, reminds me of other stories where if you are too greedy it bites back on you. Tolstoy also wrote a short story titled ‘How much land does a man require’ and when the man gets too greedy, he dies, and they bury him in a 6-foot plot of land.

Though in this case it might have turned in Thenardier’s favour had Thenardier remembered to bring his gun. Valjean is strong and powerful and Thenardier is no match for him but with a gun and Valjean wanting to protect Cosette, who knows how that might have turned out?

I still feel that Valjean giving more and more money to Thenardiers each time wasn’t the wisest decision, but I also don’t see how he would have done it without paying 1500 francs at least, so I am a bit torn on that, but here Valjean demonstrates that he could do the math perfectly and calculate the entirety of Fantine’s debt and her payment while walking and talking, and it might have been nice had he used that tactic from the start.

M. Thénardier oversteps his last attempt to get money from Cosette's guardians, and JVJ finally pulls out the truth: that he was fetching Cosette at her (late) mother's request, and that he knows how much money has been laid versus how much should have been paid.  

I've always sort of wondered why JVJ took this approach: be mysterious, favor the child, offer to take her, pay for the privilege, and only then reveal that he's legitimately acting on Fantine's request. It (potentially) prolongs the drama of who the stranger is (er, the mourning attire was a huge clue, tbh), but my first instinct would be to start with the letter, and then haggle over the 'small amounts' owing (and increasing your bill 500% over the agreed rate is not 'small'). Current headcanon is that JVJ had studied enough criminals during his time in prison to anticipate M. Thénardier's pathetic attempt at strategy and plan in advance how beat to counter it. Or maybe he just didn't want anyone to connect him to Montreuil-sur-Mer more than necessary.

First, thank you @pilferingapples for the historical context the last chapter's transaction between Thenardier and the-traveller-who-must-not-be-named. It makes Hugo's avoidance of naming VJV a lot more ominous (until the mourning garb appears).

The Thenardiers are really, really bad with money. 

We get the whole run-down here, about the hundreds of francs they had from Fantine just in the last year. She paid their debts to the tune of 57 francs when first leaving Cosette with them, within a month they sold Cosette's clothing for 60. They're getting 96 to 300 francs per year for Cosette (pure profit, since she's costing them no money for room, food, or clothing), plus the spurious medical and clothing expenses. Within the last year, they had over 500 additional francs from Fantine/VJV besides the usual 15/month. And somehow are still 1500 in debt. 

[Is the inn unprofitable? What are they doing to run up those sorts of debts? Their daughters have decent clothes, but we don't have many other clues.]

And, for the last three years, Cosette's own labor has been a net economic boon to them. They value her knitting at 30 sous (1.5 francs). There are 3 or 4 more days work on the stockings, but it doesn't say how long she's already spent on them; modern estimates for a proficient knitter suggest 20 hours for a pair of adult socks; let's call it a week for Cosette to make a child's pair, given she's been doing it for a while and gets no breaks. She's also their only servant. I don't have a French resource for wages, but Beeton's (English, 1861) gives 5 pounds per year as the lowest rate for a scullery maid (lowest paid female servant); this is about 76 francs per year. A maid-of-all work (even a young, poorly trained one like Cosette) should be starting at closer to 9 pounds per year (~137 francs).

To recap: Cosette's bringing in at least 300 francs per year for "board", plus up to 300-500 extortion, plus about 75 francs worth of knitting, and saving them 75-140 francs on having a paid servant (plus room and board for that servant, because eating scraps off the floor and sleeping under the stairs is not going to cut it). 

Cosette's worth 450-1000 francs per year to the Thernadiers. Even with Fantine apparently not paying, they're getting 150+ francs worth of work from her each year. And they're willing to turn her out for spite.

They. Are. Really. Bad. With. Money. 

In addition to being terrible people.

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Nut Shot With Dog (2.3.10 - Day 226)