clayforthedevil | a little idle talk

Bahorel knocks on Feuilly's door. If Feuilly answers, he's there to chat, and to return a book that he borrowed after Feuilly borrowed it from the Library (on Polish crafts. Of course it's on Polish crafts. But it's an interesting book, so Bahorel only teased a relatively little.).

(If Feuilly doesn't answer, Bahorel's got his lockpicking kit, a container of dental floss, some small coins, and a few little sewing tools. It's good to have backup plans!)

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"Oh, were you hoping I'd have time to embroider yours?" Bahorel tilts his head and looks at Feuilly as if actually considering the idea. "I can't recommend it. You should really draw more attention to your shoulders. Especially now you're becoming a sowrdfighter. But some decent color on that waistcoat..."

It's possible that now he's actually considering it.

What--

Oh, sure, now he starts going pink. "My clothes are fine. --Oh, Bahorel. I have a message for you. From Inspector Javert. He's demanding the return of his pictures."

Javert was just full of messages for people.

Bahorel snorts. "He's free to demand whatever he likes, no doubt. And I'm free to ignore it. Marvelous place, Millliways." He half snarls as he says it. There's a bitter edge to any thought of Javert, beyond Bahorel's usual disgust with the agents of their nation's laws.

"Yeah, I was sure you'd be very concerned when you heard how upset he was. What are these pictures? --Oh. You have heard from Enjolras, yes? About Javert?"

It changes surprisingly little, knowing for certain that Javert is with the Sureté. Feuilly had never put much faith in the man's protestations that he was just a blacksmith now.

"Ha! I did. I am impressed; the spy is truly the very ideal of the wit and self-command his masters would wish for everyone. Truly, it gives me hope for the future." Bahorel really is impressed! He had actually boggled for a moment. Who tells their enemy their current business just for the asking? Apparently I'm-Not-an-Inspector-I'm-Sureté-Now Javert! And a devotedly stupid foe is always cheering! Even if the man is absolute slime.

"The pictures were of the barricade. And some of the men from the barricade." Bahorel grimaces. "And a very detailed portrait of Monsieur Fauchelevent." Ew. "I gave the pictures to Enjolras and Combeferre to see if any of the men were the ones who'd survived--who'd been sent away, before the end."

Edited Date: 2015-08-18 05:58 pm (UTC)

"Oh--yes! Yes, I saw some of those pictures. I didn't have the--I didn't take them away myself. Good for you." Feuilly would never say that everyone should be more like Bahorel, but he'll very happily agree that Bahorel should be like Bahorel. "--He seemed to be in a good mood when I saw him, though it didn't last."

"Hah! Ruined his day for him? Good." It's said with feeling. "That one's never going to have any reason for a good mood that's healthy for anyone else. --Has he started trotting after you like he does Enjolras, or did you take it on yourself to ruin his day?" It's not like Feuilly to try and ruin someone's mood, but then Feuilly's been branching out into all sorts of new endeavours.

Also, it's Javert. The man could inspire a songbird to go for his eyes.

"I think he ruined his day for himself. All I did was agree to tell you he wanted his pictures, and not agree to threaten Harry Percy with--with Javert's disapproval."

Javert had been ridiculous. More so than usual. Feuilly shakes his head. "I don't understand the man. Oh, I know I don't need to understand him, but--" But really. What is Javert?

"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 Date: 2015-08-19 10:38 am (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 Date: 2015-08-19 11:53 am (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 Date: 2015-08-19 01:17 pm (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 Date: 2015-08-19 04:30 pm (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 Date: 2015-08-19 07:25 pm (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.