Lisette

Chapter 11 ~ The Call of a Turkey

In the January of 1829, I went to visit Monsieur Mabeuf with Marius, as we had arranged at Christmas. He was an active man, well past sixty, but still delighting in his twin passions of reading and gardening. As Marius told me on the way there, he rarely went out without a book under his arm, and often came home with two or three more. He had published a book on flowers, and, when we had arrived and were made welcome, Monsieur Mabeuf took great pleasure in showing me both the completed book and the copper plates from which the illustrations were printed.

Looking around his small sitting room, while he and Marius talked, I was able to look closely at the framed dried grasses and engravings of paintings hanging on Monsieur Mabeuf's walls. The people in the engravings all wore strange, old fashioned clothes, and I couldn't help think it would be wonderful to see the original paintings, with all of their colour and detail. Looking through his shelves, there were all manner of books, from novels, to botanical works, to legends from far off countries that I could never dream of visiting.

It turned out that in his gardening, the old man had cultivated all manner of new strains of plants, from tulips to pears, and dreamed one day of producing a strain of indigo that would grow in France. Seeing my joy in looking at the pictures, and reading about the flowers that I had once sold to survive, he suggested that I return later in the year, when he could show me his garden.

"I know very little of gardening!" I protested. "I know well enough how to buy and sell cut flowers from the women in the markets, but how to grow them is beyond me."

"There is always time to learn," he smiled. "And even if you don't have a garden, some violets in a pot on a windowsill are always pleasant. I can show you how to care for them, one of these days. And you're welcome to borrow a book. That way you shall just have to come and visit again!"

He seemed to like the company of both myself and Marius, enjoying quiet companionship, and it was refreshing to spend time out of the room where I stayed with Enjolras somewhere that didn't have the loud and boisterous atmosphere of the Musain. He was not at all inclined towards politics, finding his books and plants far more important. On hearing that I almost passed by his door whenever I went back and forth from the drapers', he suggested that I call in and see if he was around whenever I was passing - "to see how I was getting along with whichever book I decided to borrow first."

I chose the one of myths from all around the world - it was so very different to any of the books on Enjolras's shelves. Instead of going straight home, I walked for a while with Marius through the Luxembourg gardens. He seemed lonely, and withdrawn. In an attempt to draw him out of himself a little, I spoke of the work I had been beginning, talking to some of the most impoverished people on the streets, and taking down their stories and pictures. On hearing this, he looked up, and asked: "Do you ask their names?"

"Of course. Generally their first name is all they're willing to give me, and no wonder. And sometimes the name they give me isn't their real one. Why do you ask?"

"My father - you remember - in his note to me, he said that the man who had saved his life was named Thenardier. I wish to be able to repay Thenardier the kindness he did my father, and I still have yet to find him. His inn in Montfermeil went bankrupt, and I can't help wondering - it's a long shot I know - if you were able to ask after him? From what I've found out, he was never a rich man, and to recover from your inn going bankrupt... It wouldn't surprise me if he had ended up somewhere in Paris."

"I'll see what I can do. It's strange - some of the poorest know almost no one, while for some others there is a whole network of people known to them. It may be that there's someone who knows someone. Of course, we're working on the assumption that he still goes by the same name..."