She received the name as she received the water from the clouds upon her brow when it rained.She was called little Fantine.
No one knew more than that.
This human creature had entered life in just this way.
At the age of ten, Fantine quitted the town and went to service with some farmers in the neighborhood.
At fifteen she came to Paris "to seek her fortune."Fantine was beautiful, and remained pure as long as she could.She was a lovely blonde, with fine teeth.
She had gold and pearls for her dowry; but her gold was on her head, and her pearls were in her mouth.
She worked for her living; then, still for the sake of her living,-- for the heart, also, has its hunger,--she loved.
She loved Tholomyes.
An amour for him; passion for her.
The streets of the Latin quarter, filled with throngs of students and grisettes, saw the beginning of their dream.
Fantine had long evaded Tholomyes in the mazes of the hill of the Pantheon, where so many adventurers twine and untwine, but in such a way as constantly to encounter him again.There is a way of avoiding which resembles seeking.
In short, the eclogue took place.
Blachevelle, Listolier, and Fameuil formed a sort of group of which Tholomyes was the head.
It was he who possessed the wit.
Tholomyes was the antique old student; he was rich; he had an income of four thousand francs; four thousand francs! a splendid scandal on Mount Sainte-Genevieve. Tholomyes was a fast man of thirty, and badly preserved.
He was wrinkled and toothless, and he had the beginning of a bald spot, of which he himself said with sadness, the skull at thirty, the knee at forty.
His digestion was mediocre, and he had been attacked by a watering in one eye.
But in proportion as his youth disappeared, gayety was kindled; he replaced his teeth with buffooneries, his hair with mirth, his health with irony, his weeping eye laughed incessantly.
He was dilapidated but still in flower.His youth, which was packing up for departure long before its time, beat a retreat in good order, bursting with laughter, and no one saw anything but fire.
He had had a piece rejected at the Vaudeville.He made a few verses now and then.