“When Brothers Turn into Being Fathers” is how Victor Hugo chooses to title his chapter on the Thénardiers’ abandoned kids. I was so struck by this portrait of these children as well as the wealthier little boy with his father in this chapter that I wanted to bookpack it. I set off one windy, but sunny, Sunday, to jog through the gardens, following where these characters would have been.
These children wander through Luxembourg Gardens, alone, as the rest of Paris is either locked up in their homes or fighting in the barricade. Where are the police that usually patrol these gardens? At the barricades. Where are the authorities helping them find a home and food? Preoccupied. But these young children are not afraid. The older one puts out his hand. The younger one grabs it. The older one carries a small stick to ward off potential harm. The younger one is hungry. The older one looks for food. The older one is not his father, but he can no longer just be his brother. This is one of the many beautiful portraits of unexpected mentorship Victor Hugo paints. As they no longer have the luxury to think about the failures of their situation, they understand how to live by learning as they go, teaching others how to survive, and looking, always, towards the future. In these portraits of a friend or sibling taking on the responsibility of a parent, Victor Hugo shows us the value of mentorship, informed by lived experience, as a guide for how to live life and face tomorrow, even when tomorrow is not promised.
Getting off the metro stop, I was struck by the silence in this neighborhood. It was a Sunday, a day of rest for many Parisians, but I legitimately didn’t see a soul. Besides one older woman with her baguette. What a contrast from the craziness of the barricades surrounding the Luxembourg Gardens in this section of Les Misérables. Walking into the Luxembourg Gardens, I found out where everyone in Montparnasse was. They were having a baguette, jogging, riding ponies, and basking in the rare sun. What a contrast from the outside streets. And ironic, considering it was a flipped situation in Les Misérables, where Luxembourg Gardens served as a temporary refuge from the outside chaos and noise of the barricades.
In this chapter, Hugo makes a conscious decision to stop the rising action in the barricades to show, visually, how the personal is inherently political. It’s a striking moment that purposefully interrupts the flow of action. He writes “At the same moment, in the Luxembourg Gardens – for the eyes of the drama must be everywhere – there were two children holding hands.” (1092) In the chaos of this moment, these children have gone forgotten, but Victor Hugo makes the choice to remember them.
How did these children manage to get into the gardens among this chaos? Victor Hugo asks this question, but in his typical narration style, he doesn’t quite know the answer. He thinks that “Perhaps they had escaped from some guard-room…Perhaps somewhere in the vicinity, at the Enfer Toll Gate or on Esplanade de l’Observatoire.” (1092) The first time I went to this area, I was focused on Luxembourg Gardens, so I didn’t see the Enfer Toll Gate. I returned to this same area a couple of days later and noticed an interesting lion sculpture at an intersection in the Montparnasse neighborhood on the way to the Montparnasse Cemetery from the Catacombs. After a bit of research and digging online, I found out the Enfer Toll Gates, or the Gates of Hell as they were known, no longer exist as they were and are in fact in the approximate area of this lion statue that I happened to stumble upon. Today, it is called the Place Denfert-Rochereau, which seems to be in the place of the Enfer Gates. It seems very appropriate that I would stumble upon this landmark rather than seek it out, considering that these two young Thénardiers would have stumbled upon these gates, rather than knowing exactly where they were going.
My estimation of where the Enfer Toll Gates would be today.
And now into the Luxembourg Gardens. Hugo goes on for a few pages describing the beauty of the Luxembourg Gardens, particularly that “There is nothing so wonderful as foliage washed by the rain and dried by the sun – it is a warm freshness.” (1094) I can relate to this feeling, Victor Hugo! After the rain that plagued the first two weeks in Paris and often came right when we ventured outside into the streets there was truly no better place to be than in the Luxembourg Gardens, taking in the most beautiful park I’d ever seen, as the sun came out for the first time in days. In this rapturous prose, he gets lost in his thoughts: everything from Goethe to the flaws in thought that devalues human connection. Running through these gardens it isn’t hard to see how one can get lost in thought. I start to think about how lovely it would be to have the park to myself. Until I make eye contact with other runners, smile with them, and bask in this small moment of connection. I think that Victor Hugo would be proud of me for reaching out to strangers, even in this small way. I take in the statues “…clothed all in tatters of sunshine” (1092) and the “abundance of light” (1095). As I catch my breath at the end of this run, I take a seat by the lake, where much of the action of this chapter happens.
I watch the little boys with their sailboats, and they remind me of the Thénardier kids and the boy with his father, who came from a house which had owned a key to Luxembourg Gardens even when it was closed. A lot of these boys are with their parents. They don’t feed swans like the boy with his father. Perhaps these little boats have replaced the swans. The little boy with his little boat, the Greek flag waving on it, leans far forward to reach the boat, almost falling in, laying on his tummy to reach it with his guide stick. This feels familiar. Maybe because in this chapter: “The older lad quickly lay flat on his stomach on the curved edge of the pond…almost falling in, with his right hand he reached his stick out towards the brioche.” (1099). The brioche having been thrown by the wealthier father and son towards the swan. The little boy grabs onto his boat. The older lad “grabbed the brioche...” (1099) Both stand up. Their actions are almost identical, the context is completely different.
At this, I walk out of the gardens. I have found what I was looking for.
Source:
Tribillon , Justinien. “New Life in the Kingdom of Death: The Plan to Redevelop Subterranean Paris.” The Guardian, 6 Feb. 2017, www.theguardian.com/cities/2017/feb/06/beyond-kingdom-death-journey-subterranean-paris.