Part 1 Book 4 Chapter 3 The Lark 19世纪30年代的法国。富人乘坐马车,用金餐具吃喝。穷人没有工作,没有食物,没有希望——他们是穷苦人,起义一触即发。法国人民还记得1789年的法国大革命。当时,民众在巴黎街头筑起街垒,死去的人数以千计。这样的时刻又要到来了吗? 这是冉阿让的故事。他坐了19年的牢,终于恢复了自由身。可是,他怎么生活,到哪里去找工作呢?像他这样一个人,还有什么希望呢?这也是沙威的故事,他是一个督察,一个残忍的人,一个冷酷的人。他的人生只有一个目标——把冉阿让再次送进大牢。这还是芳汀的故事,芳汀和她的女儿珂赛特。她们的故事是怎样改变了冉阿让的一生?这也是马吕斯的故事。他是巴黎的一名学生,做好了为起义而牺牲的准备——或是为爱情而死。最后,还有伽弗洛什——一个在巴黎街头流浪的孩子,他没有家,没有亲人,没有鞋穿……可他的脸上总是挂着笑容,心中总是有歌儿在欢唱。 不过,我们要先从冉阿让讲起…… France in the 1830s. The rich ride in carriages, and eat from gold plates. The poor have no work, no food, no hope – they are Les Misérables, and rebellion is in the air. France remembers the French Revolution in 1789, when the people built barricades in the streets of Paris, and the dead were counted in thousands. Is that time coming again? This is the story of Jean Valjean. A prisoner for nineteen years, now at last he is a free man. But how can he live, where can he find work? What hope is there for a man like him? It is also the story of Javert, a police inspector, a cruel man, a hard man. He wants one thing in life – to send Valjean back to prison. And it is Fantine’s story too, Fantine and her daughter Cosette. How does their story change Valjean’s life? And it is also Marius’s story. He is a student in Paris, ready to die for the rebellion – or for love. And last, there is Gavroche – a boy of the Paris streets, with no home, no family, no shoes... But a boy with a smile on his face and a song in his heart. But we begin with Jean Valjean...
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一味狠毒,不能发达。那客店的光景并不好。
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It is not all in all sufficient to be wicked in order to prosper. The cook-shop was in a bad way.
Thanks to the traveller’s fifty-seven francs, Thenardier had been able to avoid a protest and to honor his signature. On the following month they were again in need of money. The woman took Cosette’s outfit to Paris, and pawned it at the pawnbroker’s for sixty francs. As soon as that sum was spent, the Thenardiers grew accustomed to look on the little girl merely as a child whom they were caring for out of charity; and they treated her accordingly. As she had no longer any clothes, they dressed her in the cast-off petticoats and chemises of the Thenardier brats; that is to say, in rags. They fed her on what all the rest had left--a little better than the dog, a little worse than the cat. Moreover, the cat and the dog were her habitual table-companions; Cosette ate with them under the table, from a wooden bowl similar to theirs.
The mother, who had established herself, as we shall see later on, at M. sur M., wrote, or, more correctly, caused to be written, a letter every month, that she might have news of her child. The Thenardiers replied invariably, "Cosette is doing wonderfully well."
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德纳第夫妇千篇一律地回复说:“珂赛特安好异常。”
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At the expiration of the first six months the mother sent seven francs for the seventh month, and continued her remittances with tolerable regularity from month to month. The year was not completed when Thenardier said: "A fine favor she is doing us, in sooth! What does she expect us to do with her seven francs?" and he wrote to demand twelve francs. The mother, whom they had persuaded into the belief that her child was happy, "and was coming on well," submitted, and forwarded the twelve francs.
Certain natures cannot love on the one hand without hating on the other. Mother Thenardier loved her two daughters passionately, which caused her to hate the stranger.
It is sad to think that the love of a mother can possess villainous aspects. Little as was the space occupied by Cosette, it seemed to her as though it were taken from her own, and that that little child diminished the air which her daughters breathed. This woman, like many women of her sort, had a load of caresses and a burden of blows and injuries to dispense each day. If she had not had Cosette, it is certain that her daughters, idolized as they were, would have received the whole of it; but the stranger did them the service to divert the blows to herself. Her daughters received nothing but caresses. Cosette could not make a motion which did not draw down upon her head a heavy shower of violent blows and unmeritedchastisement. The sweet, feeble being, who should not have understood anything of this world or of God, incessantly punished, scolded, ill-used, beaten, and seeing beside her two little creatures like herself, who lived in a ray of dawn!
Madame Thenardier was vicious with Cosette. Eponine and Azelma were vicious. Children at that age are only copies of their mother. The size is smaller; that is all.
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一年过了,又是一年。
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A year passed; then another.
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那村子里的人说:
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People in the village said:--
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“德纳第一家子都是好人。他们并不宽裕,却还抚养人家丢在他们家里的一个穷孩子!”
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"Those Thenardiers are good people. They are not rich, and yet they are bringing up a poor child who was abandoned on their hands!"
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大家都认为珂赛特已被她的母亲忘记了。
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They thought that Cosette’s mother had forgotten her.
In the meanwhile, Thenardier, having learned, it is impossible to say by what obscure means, that the child was probably a bastard, and that the mother could not acknowledge it, exacted fifteen francs a month, saying that "the creature" was growing and "eating," and threatening to send her away. "Let her not bother me," he exclaimed, "or I’ll fire her brat right into the middle of her secrets. I must have an increase." The mother paid the fifteen francs.
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年复一年,孩子长大了,她的苦难也增加了。
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From year to year the child grew, and so did her wretchedness.
As long as Cosette was little, she was the scape-goat of the two other children; as soon as she began to develop a little, that is to say, before she was even five years old, she became the servant of the household.
Five years old! the reader will say; that is not probable. Alas! it is true. Social suffering begins at all ages. Have we not recently seen the trial of a man named Dumollard, an orphan turned bandit, who, from the age of five, as the official documents state, being alone in the world, "worked for his living and stole"?
Cosette was made to run on errands, to sweep the rooms, the courtyard, the street, to wash the dishes, to even carry burdens. The Thenardiers considered themselves all the more authorized to behave in this manner, since the mother, who was still at M. sur M., had become irregular in her payments. Some months she was in arrears.
If this mother had returned to Montfermeil at the end of these three years, she would not have recognized her child. Cosette, so pretty and rosy on her arrival in that house, was now thin and pale. She had an indescribably uneasy look. "The sly creature," said the Thenardiers.
Injustice had made her peevish, and misery had made her ugly. Nothing remained to her except her beautiful eyes, which inspired pain, because, large as they were, it seemed as though one beheld in them a still larger amount of sadness.
It was a heart-breaking thing to see this poor child, not yet six years old, shivering in the winter in her old rags of linen, full of holes, sweeping the street before daylight, with an enormous broom in her tiny red hands, and a tear in her great eyes.
She was called the Lark in the neighborhood. The populace, who are fond of these figures of speech, had taken a fancy to bestow this name on this trembling, frightened, and shivering little creature, no bigger than a bird, who was awake every morning before any one else in the house or the village, and was always in the street or the fields before daybreak.