clayforthedevil | a little idle talk

"Of course you don't understand him." Feuilly not drawing at the moment, so Bahorel thumps his shoulder fondly. "You don't even have any decent indencency. And he's every weak and rotten thing a man could be, but at the heart of it: he's a coward. And a traitor. But then that's the same thing. It's all cringing and crawling , and laughing when there's a chance to hurt someone else because it means it's not him getting hurt. And not even the nerve to know it about himself."

This little speech gets some raised eyebrows. Not disagreement, but a definite look of questioning. "That sounds like you know him. Just how often do you talk?"

"Once was enough. Especially with what Joly's heard from him--hah, and Joly was trying to be forgiving. Forgiving of that--!" Bahorel twists his hand in his own hair, hard. "--Ahhh, he doesn't know. He's probably right about that. He's making a life here, why should he have to know? But that stinking--" Bahorel breaks off. The idea of the spy taking advantage of his friends' ignorance and kinder natures, even by mutual accident, makes his stomach twist and his fists itch. He sets his jaw for a moment and pulls himself in a little. This is Feuilly's room; he won't just start wrecking things. (He can. He's well aware he can, physically. And he won't, not over a bit of work like the spy.)

"You haven't read it yet." It's not a question, or an accusation; Feuilly's also been making a definitely wiser use of his time. It's just a statement, and a chance for Feuilly to tell him if he's wrong about it.

Edited 2015-08-19 10:38 (UTC)

"Forgiving his work at the barricade? That's--well, it is ours to forgive, at least each of us a little bit, individually?"

Feuilly frowns at Bahorel, seriously weighing for a moment whether he needs to move the conversation to another place, given the current state of his room, with his work laid out everywhere. Please don't break any of his fan-making tools, Bahorel.

"But--read--? Oh, that Hugo novel, do you mean? Or something else?" That might answer the unspoken question. No. He hasn't read it. Enjolras had pointed out some particularly essential bits, but he hadn't gone beyond that himself.

Edited 2015-08-19 11:53 (UTC)

"Right, that book." Bahorel moves himself over to most un-art-covered section of the room he can find, sits down, and pulls a pen out of his coat. It's not much of a distraction, but it's something to keep his hands busy.

"He murdered a woman." Bahorel lifts a hand against protest. "Argue that the book's not accurate all through, I thought of that, but it's more accurate than any newspaper until the barricade falls. And it has a good bit on the spy before he comes to our barricade-- years before--and he murdered a woman." Bahorel's weighed the accuracy of that accusation in his own heart since reading the passage; he knows his own biases. But even Monsieur Fauchelevent said he killed her at the time, and that's clearly a man ready to forgive and excuse whatever he can. There's no doubt in Bahorel's mind on the matter. "He killed her and made her last moments nightmare, and said she deserved it."

He spins the pen on the floor. A hard, sharp smile flickers across his face for a moment. "She was poor, you see. Poor, and a prostitute. And for Monsiuer l'Inspecteur that was enough."

Edited 2015-08-19 13:17 (UTC)

"I'm not about to argue the book isn't accurate, I'm not about to argue at all. But--tell me the story? Murdered how?"

It's not a challenge in the slightest, and doesn't sound like one. It's just a request for information. "Was this someone that he jailed?"

Bahorel shakes his head. "He tried to jail her. He had no right, none, not even by the wretched law-- she'd been assaulted, in view of witnesses! But she defended herself against it. Against a man of property. 'The sort of man who says: my fields, my woods, my peasants'." Hugo does have a flair for the right phrase, Bahorel could never deny that. "You know the kind-- they think everyone else exists for their comfort-- or their entertainment."

"And the dear Inspector agrees with such fellows. Oh, he lays his philosophy out all very pretty-- the mayor over the lawman, the factory-owner over the worker, the propertied classes over everyone-- that's his law, never mind what's on the books. That's his order, and the ones he counts low-born are meant to smile when then high-born kick them in the teeth, and if they bite the boot that's stamping on them, that's his idea of a crime!" Bahorel shakes his head. The reasoning behind that is for later. "--So of course he arrested her."

"At any rate-- Fauchelevent was mayor of the town then, and made Javert hold to the law. But the woman-- Fantine, her name was-- was weak, and the shock put her in the hospital." Bahorel twists the pen around in his fingers. There's a lot of story there, but what really matters to this moment...

"To be brief: in the end, Fauchelevent couldn't keep protecting her. And Javert went to her sickbed, and insulted her by profession, and terrorized her; and that shock finished her." Bahorel spins the pen apart at the cartridge. "--She had a child, both of them abandoned by the father. She was working for the child's sake. Javert knew it; and he made sure she died thinking her child orphaned and alone for good."

Bahorel laughs again, hard and jagged. "And if the good honest Inspector doesn't remember, I wouldn't be surprised, because he wasn't even there for her. Ending a woman's life was just a little accidental reward for him, in the commission of his duty."

...Yeah, Bahorel doesn't like Javert much.

Feuilly listens to all this gravely. His face is mobile enough--indignation, bitterness, pity, dismay--but he doesn't speak a word until Bahorel's done. "What happened to her child? Does anyone know? --But. I see. I didn't know that. I didn't know that story in particular, I mean. Anyone who sends people to jail breaks up families, puts people in a place of, of suffering."

He pulls his feet up to the edge of his seat and wraps his arms around them, chin on his knees. "How long ago was this? And do you, do you know how accurate the book is when it comes to this business?"

And does anyone know what happened to the child?

Edited 2015-08-19 16:30 (UTC)

"1822, 1823, it seems. I did check--it took time, but the records are there for Fantine's arrest and death, at least. For the rest-- there's no one to ask, save M. Fauchelevent and Javert himself. I won't torment the one, and the other-- I didn't want to give him any reason to go looking for the book. And I do doubt he'd even remember."

There's more to say on the subject of Javert, but of course Feuilly has asked the important question. "As to the child-- and I did not know this, when I first began reading it-- she survived, and lived well, against all the odds. And she is Marius Pontmercy's fiancée, if not his wife by now."

Yes, right: even the ones among them who haven't read the book can agree that it's best kept out of Javert's hands. Feuilly nods at that. Best not to mention any of it to Javert, best not to make him wonder how they know.

But Bahorel's last information gets as startled an expression from Feuilly as he could ever hope. "Marius Pontmercy? Marius from the barricade? How--how did they come to meet?"

No, really, how. Feuilly is quite aware that abandoned and orphaned children sometimes survive and live well, against all the odds. But they don't generally happen to marry a man who was fighting at a barricade spied on by the man who killed their mother.

It's a pretty dark tale generally, but this part at least is nearly funny in sheer complicated strangeness. "Ah, now that's M. Fauchelevent again. After Fantine died, he stepped in to save the child; took her to Paris and raised her in a convent school; and when she was old enough to consider her schooling done, took her out of the school to see a little of the world." A very, very , very little. "She met eyes with our Marius at the Jardine de Plantes, as many couples do; and thus M. Fauchelevent then went to the barricade to see to Marius' safety on her account."

Bahorel smiles a little. "I am summarizing a little on that." Just a teeny bit.

"Did he!"

Did Fauchelevent the mayor take in this poor dying prostitute's daughter, and raise her as his own, that is. Feuilly, wrapped up compactly in his seat, appears to take that bit of information in and store it up--that, much more than the more direct answer to his question, that a girl and a boy met in a public garden.

"He did." But Bahorel catches the trend of Feuilly's astonishment. "You only have to talk to her to know she sees him as her own father, and she's a bright and happy girl. But, Fauchelevent-- he didn't start out bourgeois. He was a peasant; a poor family, at that. Poor enough he had to act illegally to keep them fed, and didn't have a chance of appeal when he was caught."

Bahorel runs a hand through his hair and laughs a little. "And if you're going to ask me for the whole story past that we're going to need to order lunch in. But: they disappeared while he was in prison--you can guess how that goes-- and he began his new life as M. Fauchelevent so he could live beyond that yellow passport."

No need to explain or defend Fauchelevent's technical crimes, the cruel choices on offer to poverty. Feuilly doesn't need Hugo or Bahorel to spell that out for him.

No, he doesn't need to explain. Feuilly nods.

He's quiet for a while, chin on his knees, not much showing in his face; finally he says, "And M. Fauchelevent comes here, doesn't he? I've never met him."

"He does; I've only met him once, before you came here." Bahorel shakes his head. "Helping Javert to build his church, of all things. Don't ask me to explain that, because I can't. But he said--Javert knew who he was, then."

Feuilly can probably figure that one out faster than Bahorel will, too. Maybe none of them are saints in Valjean's line, but Feuilly's a lot closer to it than Bahorel's ever even wanted to be.

It takes him a moment to pull together the various threads: right, Fauchelevent, who was at the barricade for Marius, knows Javert because he one was mayor of a town where Javert worked for the police. And they argued over the treatment of a poor woman, mother of Marius Pontmercy's wife.

"It was Fauchelevent," he says slowly, "who asked for the spy at the barricade. And--let him go? Well. --As for the church, I can think of--oh--many reasons. But I don't know the man at all."

Except that he's a good man. A good man on the individual level: a man to take in an orphan, release an enemy. A man saving lives that were in his hands to save.

Edited 2015-08-19 19:25 (UTC)

" Can you?--Yes, you probably can." Feuilly is bound to understand anything that could lend that sort of patience better than Bahorel does.
" Share any that seem likely; I can only get as far as religious piety. Or martyrdom, I suppose; he seems to have that streak." Not that anyone in this conversation would know anything about that at all in any way! "

Bahorel frowns, not angry now, just thinking. " I've only spoken to him a little, and heard what others have said--I think Enjolras has spoken with him the most, of our number. But he seemed very careless of his own interests." That's not necessarily a bad thing; but Bahorel would never consider it to be really a good thing, either.

Feuilly shrugs at Bahorel's question about church-building motives. "Religious piety is as good an explanation as any. I--the reasons I can think of, why I might do work like that, might not have anything to do with Fauchelevent. You could say that I'm helping Javert with his church--well, you'd have to stretch a point, but I've copied some pages for that manuscript Bible." And that's turned out complicated enough.

He pushes a hand through his hair. "Hm, well, we've never met anyone careless of his own interests before, have we. --I'd like to meet him. It seems wrong, though, reading about someone and--and mixing that with meeting them-- Oh, I don't know, I guess it's no different from reading something someone has written, or reading about someone in a newspaper-- But no, it's not the same. I haven't--oh, for instance, I haven't read that Shakespeare play. The one with, you know, with Harry Percy."

His ears are pink, which annoys him, because he isn't even talking about Harry right now, he's talking about something else. "And I haven't really felt like I needed to read that Hugo novel. Do you think I should?"

"No." The answer is immediate. "Why should you read it? We needed to know what it touched on about our work; enough of us have read it to know that." That was why he read it at first, at least as early as he did.

"And for me, twice so. I wouldn't call Hugo a friend-hah, now I've read more of his work I really wouldn't call him a friend. We'd only met a few times. But we had friends and cause in common." It may not have been a cause that matters--or even makes any sense-- to many of Bahorel's friends here, but that's never bothered him. " I had to see how it went. But you? Read the sections I gave Enjolras. That's all you need to have in detail. Read it if you want; it's a good book, for a book. You'll understand what it's doing better than most. But need to? No. Never, if you don't want to."

And because Feuilly's ears are turning pink, he adds " And you don't need to read any of Shakespeare's opinions about your knight, either. The history doesn't really line up with ours, and I'm sure you know the person much better than the Bard ever imagined him."

...Only very slight Eyebrows. Out of deference to Feuilly's apparent delicacy.

Edited 2015-08-22 23:43 (UTC)

He raises his eyebrows a little at the immediacy of the response, but it's reassuring. "I've looked at what Enjolras thought was important. It's not--oh, I won't say I don't care for novels--because you'll lecture me for a week. But I have other things I'd rather read sooner."

Such as things that are not Shakespeare. "Right, I know the history's different. It's not--" Eh. Feuilly shakes his head at Bahorel, almost irritably. Harry will sort out whether he's currently alive or dead, and knowing the history and history-fiction doesn't help Feuilly at all. "--So did you find anything interesting about Hugo?"

The comment about novels gets a laugh. "Yes, I've not yet given up on your capacity for appreciating the arts." As for the rest... Bahorel grins, all indecency. "When he died, the prostitutes of Paris held a holiday in his honor." Hey, that's interesting!

But surely not something Feuilly would care about. Alas. "--I don't know what you knew about him in our time. When I met him, he was a good bourgeois whose fight had all gone into his art and half-vanished there. Louis-Phillipe's pet poet, faugh-- well, that's one reason not to read the book, he goes on for pages about how the Pear isn't really that bad. Ridiculously obvious excuses for himself, there--huh, and for ' 48, too. Clearly, he came around a bit! But it's something to think we're best known in many worlds for a book written by a man who fought against the barricades then."

And congratulations, Feuilly, you've managed to steer a potentially rage-inducing discussion into the lands of mere amusing irritation!

"When who--oh. Hugo." Right. Because he had just asked about Hugo, and was not still half dwelling on the question Harry's presumed death. "Really I only know that he's a writer. There was that play--the one that turned into a fight."

(He does, in fact, know the name; he's also skimmed through some bits of Hans of Iceland, having been stuck in a friend's room with it once, waiting for a meeting. He hadn't been impressed.)

"But what does he do in '48?"

" Yes, that play that turned into a fight" says Bahorel, very dry. He tosses the pen-cap at Feuilly for that. "--Look it up yourself if you want to know. There are books about him, he keeps showing up in the histories." Hugo at least made himself an interesting bit of history to follow. " You're not interested in some old bourgeois writer right now." It's not that hard to tell when Feuilly is interested in something. The fervor is kind of a giveaway.

Edited 2015-08-24 05:32 (UTC)

"Hernani," he yelps, laughing now, while he scrabbles to find the pen-cap. "Hernani. And--all right. I do want to know about '48. Of course I've read about it in general and Hugo's name is all around, but--here, if you give me a list of books, I'll catch up, and you can lecture me better then?"

There's the pen-cap. Feuilly carries it back to Bahorel personally, rather than throwing it. "Forgiveness?"

No, Bahorel's going to remember this dire insult unto eternity! As soon as he stops laughing.

He does grab the hand Feuilly's offering the pen cap with and pull him down far enough for a quick half-hug. "Truce, truce. --On this!" No way he's giving up on the prank war, it's gotten him laser needles.

But about this, he's already jotting down titles of books and articles. "--And who are you so occupied with, right now?" It's kind of obvious, but hey, it's fair to ask!

Edited 2015-08-24 12:16 (UTC)

a little idle talk

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