Volume 1/Book 3/Chapter 5

Les Misérables, Volume 1: Fantine, Book Third: In the Year 1817, Chapter 5: At Bombarda's
(Tome 1: Fantine, Livre troisième: En l'année 1817, Chapitre 5: Chez Bombarda)

French text

Les montagnes russes épuisées, on avait songé au dîner; et le radieux huitain, enfin un peu las, s'était échoué au cabaret Bombarda, succursale qu'avait établie aux Champs-Élysées ce fameux restaurateur Bombarda, dont on voyait alors l'enseigne rue de Rivoli à côté du passage Delorme.

Une chambre grande, mais laide, avec alcôve et lit au fond (vu la plénitude du cabaret le dimanche, il avait fallu accepter ce gîte); deux fenêtres d'où l'on pouvait contempler, à travers les ormes, le quai et la rivière; un magnifique rayon d'août effleurant les fenêtres; deux tables; sur l'une une triomphante montagne de bouquets mêlés à des chapeaux d'hommes et de femmes; à l'autre les quatre couples attablés autour d'un joyeux encombrement de plats, d'assiettes, de verres et de bouteilles; des cruchons de bière mêlés à des flacons de vin; peu d'ordre sur la table, quelque désordre dessous;

Ils faisaient sous la table

Un bruit, un trique-trac de pieds épouvantable

dit Molière.

Voilà où en était vers quatre heures et demie du soir la bergerade commencée à cinq heures du matin. Le soleil déclinait, l'appétit s'éteignait.

Les Champs-Élysées, pleins de soleil et de foule, n'étaient que lumière et poussière, deux choses dont se compose la gloire. Les chevaux de Marly, ces marbres hennissants, se cabraient dans un nuage d'or. Les carrosses allaient et venaient. Un escadron de magnifiques gardes du corps, clairon en tête, descendait l'avenue de Neuilly; le drapeau blanc, vaguement rose au soleil couchant, flottait sur le dôme des Tuileries. La place de la Concorde, redevenue alors place Louis XV, regorgeait de promeneurs contents. Beaucoup portaient la fleur de lys d'argent suspendue au ruban blanc moiré qui, en 1817, n'avait pas encore tout à fait disparu des boutonnières. Çà et là au milieu des passants faisant cercle et applaudissant, des rondes de petites filles jetaient au vent une bourrée bourbonienne alors célèbre, destinée à foudroyer les Cent-Jours, et qui avait pour ritournelle:

Rendez-nous notre père de Gand,

Rendez-nous notre père.

Des tas de faubouriens endimanchés, parfois même fleurdelysés comme les bourgeois, épars dans le grand carré et dans le carré Marigny, jouaient aux bagues et tournaient sur les chevaux de bois; d'autres buvaient; quelques-uns, apprentis imprimeurs, avaient des bonnets de papier; on entendait leurs rires. Tout était radieux. C'était un temps de paix incontestable et de profonde sécurité royaliste; c'était l'époque où un rapport intime et spécial du préfet de police Anglès au roi sur les faubourgs de Paris se terminait par ces lignes: «Tout bien considéré, sire, il n'y a rien à craindre de ces gens-là. Ils sont insouciants et indolents comme des chats. Le bas peuple des provinces est remuant, celui de Paris ne l'est pas. Ce sont tous petits hommes. Sire, il en faudrait deux bout à bout pour faire un de vos grenadiers. Il n'y a point de crainte du côté de la populace de la capitale. Il est remarquable que la taille a encore décru dans cette population depuis cinquante ans; et le peuple des faubourgs de Paris est plus petit qu'avant la révolution. Il n'est point dangereux. En somme, c'est de la canaille bonne.»

Qu'un chat puisse se changer en lion, les préfets de police ne le croient pas possible; cela est pourtant, et c'est là le miracle du peuple de Paris. Le chat d'ailleurs, si méprisé du comte Anglès, avait l'estime des républiques antiques; il incarnait à leurs yeux la liberté, et, comme pour servir de pendant à la Minerve aptère du Pirée, il y avait sur la place publique de Corinthe le colosse de bronze d'un chat. La police naïve de la restauration voyait trop «en beau» le peuple de Paris. Ce n'est point, autant qu'on le croit, de la «canaille bonne». Le Parisien est au Français ce que l'Athénien était au Grec; personne ne dort mieux que lui, personne n'est plus franchement frivole et paresseux que lui, personne mieux que lui n'a l'air d'oublier; qu'on ne s'y fie pas pourtant; il est propre à toute sorte de nonchalance, mais, quand il y a de la gloire au bout, il est admirable à toute espèce de furie. Donnez-lui une pique, il fera le 10 août; donnez-lui un fusil, vous aurez Austerlitz. Il est le point d'appui de Napoléon et la ressource de Danton. S'agit-il de la patrie? il s'enrôle; s'agit-il de la liberté? il dépave. Gare! ses cheveux pleins de colère sont épiques; sa blouse se drape en chlamyde. Prenez garde. De la première rue Greneta venue, il fera des fourches caudines. Si l'heure sonne, ce faubourien va grandir, ce petit homme va se lever, et il regardera d'une façon terrible, et son souffle deviendra tempête, et il sortira de cette pauvre poitrine grêle assez de vent pour déranger les plis des Alpes. C'est grâce au faubourien de Paris que la révolution, mêlée aux armées, conquiert l'Europe. Il chante, c'est sa joie. Proportionnez sa chanson à sa nature, et vous verrez! Tant qu'il n'a pour refrain que la Carmagnole, il ne renverse que Louis XVI; faites-lui chanter la Marseillaise, il délivrera le monde.

Cette note écrite en marge du rapport Anglès, nous revenons à nos quatre couples. Le dîner, comme nous l'avons dit, s'achevait.

English text

The Russian mountains having been exhausted, they began to think about dinner; and the radiant party of eight, somewhat weary at last, became stranded in Bombarda's public house, a branch establishment which had been set up in the Champs-Elysees by that famous restaurant-keeper, Bombarda, whose sign could then be seen in the Rue de Rivoli, near Delorme Alley.

A large but ugly room, with an alcove and a bed at the end (they had been obliged to put up with this accommodation in view of the Sunday crowd); two windows whence they could survey beyond the elms, the quay and the river; a magnificent August sunlight lightly touching the panes; two tables; upon one of them a triumphant mountain of bouquets, mingled with the hats of men and women; at the other the four couples seated round a merry confusion of platters, dishes, glasses, and bottles; jugs of beer mingled with flasks of wine; very little order on the table, some disorder beneath it;

"They made beneath the table

A noise, a clatter of the feet that was abominable,"

says Moliere.

This was the state which the shepherd idyl, begun at five o'clock in the morning, had reached at half-past four in the afternoon. The sun was setting; their appetites were satisfied.

The Champs-Elysees, filled with sunshine and with people, were nothing but light and dust, the two things of which glory is composed. The horses of Marly, those neighing marbles, were prancing in a cloud of gold. Carriages were going and coming. A squadron of magnificent body-guards, with their clarions at their head, were descending the Avenue de Neuilly; the white flag, showing faintly rosy in the setting sun, floated over the dome of the Tuileries. The Place de la Concorde, which had become the Place Louis XV. once more, was choked with happy promenaders. Many wore the silver fleur-de-lys suspended from the white-watered ribbon, which had not yet wholly disappeared from button-holes in the year 1817. Here and there choruses of little girls threw to the winds, amid the passersby, who formed into circles and applauded, the then celebrated Bourbon air, which was destined to strike the Hundred Days with lightning, and which had for its refrain:—

"Rendez-nous notre père de Gand,

Rendez-nous notre père."

"Give us back our father from Ghent,

Give us back our father."

Groups of dwellers in the suburbs, in Sunday array, sometimes even decorated with the fleur-de-lys, like the bourgeois, scattered over the large square and the Marigny square, were playing at rings and revolving on the wooden horses; others were engaged in drinking; some journeyman printers had on paper caps; their laughter was audible. Every thing was radiant. It was a time of undisputed peace and profound royalist security; it was the epoch when a special and private report of Chief of Police Angeles to the King, on the subject of the suburbs of Paris, terminated with these lines:—

"Taking all things into consideration, Sire, there is nothing to be feared from these people. They are as heedless and as indolent as cats. The populace is restless in the provinces; it is not in Paris. These are very pretty men, Sire. It would take all of two of them to make one of your grenadiers. There is nothing to be feared on the part of the populace of Paris the capital. It is remarkable that the stature of this population should have diminished in the last fifty years; and the populace of the suburbs is still more puny than at the time of the Revolution. It is not dangerous. In short, it is an amiable rabble."

Prefects of the police do not deem it possible that a cat can transform itself into a lion; that does happen, however, and in that lies the miracle wrought by the populace of Paris. Moreover, the cat so despised by Count Angles possessed the esteem of the republics of old. In their eyes it was liberty incarnate; and as though to serve as pendant to the Minerva Aptera of the Piraeus, there stood on the public square in Corinth the colossal bronze figure of a cat. The ingenuous police of the Restoration beheld the populace of Paris in too "rose-colored" a light; it is not so much of "an amiable rabble" as it is thought. The Parisian is to the Frenchman what the Athenian was to the Greek: no one sleeps more soundly than he, no one is more frankly frivolous and lazy than he, no one can better assume the air of forgetfulness; let him not be trusted nevertheless; he is ready for any sort of cool deed; but when there is glory at the end of it, he is worthy of admiration in every sort of fury. Give him a pike, he will produce the 10th of August; give him a gun, you will have Austerlitz. He is Napoleon's stay and Danton's resource. Is it a question of country, he enlists; is it a question of liberty, he tears up the pavements. Beware! his hair filled with wrath, is epic; his blouse drapes itself like the folds of a chlamys. Take care! with the arrival of first rue Greneta, he will make of it a Caudine Fork. When the hour strikes, this man of the faubourgs will grow in stature; this little man will arise, and his gaze will be terrible, and his breath will become a tempest, and there will issue forth from that slender chest enough wind to disarrange the folds of the Alps. It is, thanks to the suburban man of Paris, that the Revolution, mixed with arms, conquers Europe. He sings; it is his delight. Proportion his song to his nature, and you will see! As long as he has for refrain nothing but la Carmagnole, he only overthrows Louis XVI.; make him sing the Marseillaise, and he will free the world.

This note jotted down on the margin of Angles' report, we will return to our four couples. The dinner, as we have said, was drawing to its close.

Textual notes

de Corinthe le colosse de bronze d'un chat / in Corinth the colossal bronze figure of a cat

Hugo seems to have made this claim without any historic evidence, equally so for the claim that cats represented liberty for ancient republics. Perhaps Hugo was familiar with the Greek goddess, Artemis', identification with the Egyptian goddess Bubastis, that took the form of a cat and was worshipped. There are records of Artemis cults and statues of Artemis in Corinth, but no suggestion an Artemis statue was in the form of a cat. I found no written documents thus far stating that a bronze statue of a cat was located in Corinth.

la restauration / the Restoration

The Restoration, or the Bourbon Restoration, is the socio-governmental context of Les Misérables. The ruling family, or house, of Bourbon began with Louis I, the first Duke of Bourbon, in 1327. The Bourbon lineage ruled France for over 200 years, until it was terminated during the Revolution, in 1792. Bourbons also ruled Spain through various and lengthy durations.

After Napoleon the First and France's First Empire were defeated in 1814 by European forces in The War of the Sixth Coalition, the influential French politician and diplomat, Talleyrand, convinced the European victors that a king would be good for France. Hence, the restoration of the Bourban crown. Most civil rights gained during the Revolution were retained during the Restoration.