#tholomeyes

Among the bourgeois strolling in the gardens, a young boy walked hand-in-hand with his father; they had often walked in the Tuileries before, but rarely here. He gazed around at the lush green world with childlike wonder. Though he lagged a little behind, his father did not seem to mind, and often slowed for him, smiling indulgently down at his dirty-blonde head.

The man was Félix Tholomeyès, a rather plump, cheerful gentleman, well-dressed and smiling. His son, the younger Tholomeyès, seemed a handsome enough little creature, perhaps eight or nine, but had not yet lost the charming chubbiness of his babyhood and in this way seemed to take a great deal after his father. He, too, had rather round cheeks despite his age, and it leant him a more genial appearance still.

Between them, there was a comfortable silence. The elder was not a great conversationalist, though he enjoyed chatting here and there (especially over a glass of wine or brandy) and allowed his boy to drink in the scenery without interruption.

As the two rounded one particular path, they were obliged to move aside to allow for a pair passing in the other direction. Tholomeyès watched, with a charmed smile, as the old father led his young daughter around the turn. Though the girl was neither particularly pretty nor well-dressed, but there was something charming about the way she hugged the arm of her father and the way she leaned close to him to hear his words, always smiling.

When they drew very near, the girl’s eyes passed over him for a moment and Tholomeyès stopped walking, as surely frozen as if this laughing creature had hair of snakes--but her hair, the color of chestnuts and gleaming gold in the sun, was not what had thus affected him. It was those eyes, so large and so blue. They were at once both wondrous and terrible to behold, for they somehow transported this rather portly, middle-aged gentleman into the past. His heart thumped loudly in his ears, and he could scarcely hear his own voice say: “…Fantine?”

The young girl’s smile faded just a little as she paused, standing just paces from him. They regarded one another in wonder, man and child, for a long moment.

Then, with the coldest and most hostile look Tholomeyès could ever remember having received, the white-haired gentleman drew her away.

He shuddered despite the sunny warmth of the gardens. Though the girl had gone, the vision her gaze had so unexpectedly conjured would not fade so quickly. He had not spoken that name aloud in thirteen years, nor even thought of it much. But it was not Fantine.

No.

As he began to walk once more, almost stumbling, no longer easy and carefree in his manner, Tholomeyès let himself remember—the rosy cheeks and the big, impossibly big blue eyes. The light brown ringlets which bounced when she laughed…

“Félix! Listen, she has learned a new word!”

A bundle of lace and ribbon reaching out to him, grasping his nose with tiny fingers.

“Papa!”

Laughter from all three of them…

“Father,” said the boy, his voice quite real and confused, “who was that woman? Do you know her?”

Tholomeyès collected himself. He smiled down at his son and seemed as cheerful as ever. There was nothing to worry about. The girl had been merely that—a girl. She had stirred old memories within him, but that hardly meant that she was the child. Even if she was, what interest did he have in her? Stepfather or grandfather or whomever the old man by her side was, she was clearly well cared-for: fed, clothed, and smiling. He tried to put those eyes out of his mind…and the name as well.

“Non,—I thought I recognized her, but I was mistaken.”

Satisfied with this answer, the younger Tholomeyès resumed taking in the scenery, lagging behind his father once more.

From farther down the walk, the young girl turned to her companion. Her thoughtful frown had not completely faded.

“Father,” she ventured, “do you know that gentleman?”

The white-haired man drew her a bit closer to him as they resumed their leisurely pace. He dared not glance over his shoulder.

“No, my child,” he replied gravely.

It was not entirely true. Upon seeing the stranger’s face, it had not taken him long to discern his identity. Unknown to him though it was, it was familiar enough, for in it, he saw traces of the girl now on his arm. The name Fantine had only confirmed it. The pleasant-looking gentleman, leading a young boy by the hand—his son, surely—was none other than her father. He felt something like envy. In her innocence, she called him “Father,” and he had never corrected her. That, he knew, was good fortune enough. He could never ask for more. And yet he prayed he would never have reason to correct her, nor she to doubt…

“Who is Fantine, I wonder?” The girl’s voice was distant, as though she were asking herself rather than him. She did not appear to feel the way he tensed against her.

Fantine—that blessed, martyred name. Someday she would know it, but he had never been able to say it aloud to her, not yet. That she should hear it first from the lips of a man who had abandoned her, and the child he had gotten with her…. He cringed at the crudeness of it. The envy in his heart was foolish, but the anger—surely that was righteous.

He recalled with perfect clarity the ghostly pallor of Fantine’s face. He remembered how she had weighed next to nothing in his arms. He heard the chilling echo of her cough and saw the dark shadows around her eyes as she gazed up at him from her hospital bed, thinking him her savior.

Once, he knew, the poor, paper-thin woman with her shorn golden hair had once been a beauty. Certainly that plump fellow in his fine clothes would have thought her so—and he had used her for her beauty and her goodness.

It was because of his selfishness, the old man thought—not without bitterness—that Fantine had suffered as she had. Worse, that Cosette had suffered so. If that genial man knew how they had suffered…! If he had been at the bedside of his abandoned lover, growing weaker by the day; if he had seen the red, raw hands of his abandoned child or had felt the way she trembled in the cold….

He leaned aside just slightly and pressed his lips against her brow.

This unlooked-for gesture chased away the last vestiges of consternation on her face and she smiled affectionately. He smiled as well.

In moments such as those, basking in her adoration, Jean Valjean allowed himself to believe that sweet lie: that though he may not have fathered her, Cosette was indeed his daughter as well as Fantine’s. The bourgeois had absented himself, and the peasant—the convict—had replaced him. Perhaps it was not so in the eyes of man, or even in those of God.