Lisette

Chapter 36 ~ Almost a Saint

By September, it was becoming too cold to sit out in the Luxembourg Gardens and sew in the way that I had become accustomed to over the summer. Even so, I'd walk through them sometimes, with Musichetta and Claudine on some occasions, on others with Courfeyrac and Marius or some of the other students. At other times, I'd take an hour away from my work to simply sit and draw people – quick sketches of passersby, and more detailed drawings of those who sat for a time on the benches. Spending so much time there, many faces of others who frequented the gardens became familiar. In October, I began to notice a new pair – apparently father and daughter – who had taken to sitting each day on one of the benches that lined one of the most solitary alleys in the garden. The others noticed them too, and in his usual way, Courfeyrac gave them both nicknames. The father, seemingly about sixty years of age, sad and serious though kindly looking, was christened Monsieur Leblanc, on account of his white hair. The girl, meanwhile, with her badly cut plain black gown, was named Mademoiselle Lanoir. She looked to be a similar age to Eponine, awkward and homely looking, but she chattered away merrily to her father, while he looked upon her with eyes overflowing with ineffable paternity.

It was rare for them not to be present most mornings, and since I knew they would sit a long while on their bench, I couldn't help but draw them now and then. The girl, in her black merino gown, was poorly dressed, like the girls who attended convent schools, and while she was thin and awkward, her eyes were handsome. She often looked about curiously, with a very direct stare. Her father, meanwhile had a dazzlingly white shirt of a coarse linen, with a black cravat, blue trousers, a blue coat, and a new-looking broad-brimmed hat. He had the attitude of a retired military man, but had no corresponding decoration of any kind.

I never spoke to them, not even the good mornings that I exchanged with some of the other familiar faces in the gardens: the father, though kindly looking, had an air about him that was somewhat unapproachable. However, towards the end of October, on a particularly blustery day, the girl approached me. There were a few loose pages in my notebook – ones which I had used to teach Gavroche and Navet more in the way of reading – and as I sat down and pulled the notebook out of my pocket, the wind caught at the pages and snatched a couple of the loose ones away. They weren't especially important, containing scribbles of words and the odd sketch, alongside my jottings of budgeting and expenditure. Even so, as I chased after the pages, the girl sprang up to catch them as they blew towards her, and brought them over to me.

"Here," she said. "I think these are yours."

"Thank you!"

"What are they?" she asked. 

"They're not all that important. There's the alphabet and some words I was using to teach reading, and the odd doodle, and -"

"You can draw?"

"A little." 

"I've seen you drawing when you come and sit in the gardens - you're often here at the same time as us! Except Thursdays. You don't ever seem to be here on Thursdays."

"I'm busy on Thursdays, having lessons with a friend."

I slotted the pages back into the notebook, and flicked through it to a few of the drawings I'd done in the Musain and the Corinthe of some of the boys, and of some of the flowers in Monsieur Mabeuf's garden.

"They're beautiful! I should like to learn to draw - we barely had lessons on it at school."

"Well, I'm sure I can teach you a little, if you like?"

With that, she dragged me over to her father, insisting that I should be allowed to come and visit them, so that she could learn how to draw. She took the notebook from me, and showed him some of the drawings I'd shown her. He flatly refused her suggestion of my visiting them, but proposed instead that I could teach her a little during their visits to the garden, since we seemed to overlap so much.