E Pluribus Unum
Written for Waen.
"Cosette sees them, when she walks in the Luxembourg with her darling old father. They make such a contrast, and they make her feel an innocent. Some of them wear the latest fashion; some of them dress in what was apparently the first thing to hand; and one boy who comes very often and writes wears horrible waistcoats with ugly cravats. Some of them look very rich, and some of them look impoverished, and some of them are bourgeois. Some bring girls with them. Some of them come alone. Some of them walk with other men.
All those students... Some of them have lonely faces that hurt her heart and make her wish she had the power to take away the loneliness. Some of them laugh with such delight that she wants to know what caused the laughter and to share in it. There's one young man who has a gentle face and looks as though he knows the very secret of peace and happiness.
And she? She wishes she knew them. The walkers in the gardens. She really daren't give them names, because that would impose on them as their own people. So instead she associates them with the flowers they walk by oftenest. The boy with the awful clothes is the Rose Boy--he spends ages sighing over the rosebushes.
He has an odd mannerism too. He pulls off a few petals, sets them on top of a piece of parchment which he has laid on one of the stone benches, and then he writes around them. She wants to know why. She sometimes feels she'd be the happiest person in the world if she could know them all and why they do things.
Sometimes she just calls them by what they are. There is another student has the habit of sitting under a certain tree (with pink flowers) with his sweetheart. They speak together for ages, and the girl has such a pretty dress, a light, frothy colour of purple that becomes her. They look so in love to Cosette. She imagines that they'll be married and yet spring lovers forever. They're so beautiful together, and she thinks of that student as the Lover.
What is so special about them all, though, is that they're all learning. They're going to a college and taking classes and gaining knowledge, all sorts of knowledge. More than anything, she longs to be able to do that. That's why she wishes she could talk to them--she wants to know all the sorts of things they know. She wants to learn just as they do. She daydreams about it sometimes. Of course she can read, write, so on; but they can learn. The difficulty in this daydream is that she doesn't know really what they can learn, so she just leaves it there.
She feels an odd sort of shadow watching them all the time. If they knew that a young girl just out of a convent adored the thought of them, what would they think?
Some of them are shabby, and some of them are immaculate. Some of them have beautiful faces, and some of them are quite ugly. Some of the ugly faces look sweet, and some of the beautiful faces look angry. Some of them are simply pretty, and some simply plain. Some of them are taller than the others; some of them are much shorter. Some of them nearly dance when they walk, and some of them could hardly be more miserable. Some of them look like boys from faerie tales, and some of them look like angels from paintings, and some of them look like humans living in the world, but all of them are different in some way, and all of them are the same in one way, and she loves the idea of them more than anything in the world--save her darling, sweet old father."
Cosette sat in the attic of her house with Marius, and read the papers she'd dug out of an old chest. How funny it was that she'd written this as though it were someone besides who herself, like a story. It was really rather badly written. She stood, but didn't straighten, because the ceiling was too low. She dusted off her skirt, and moved down the stairs, still holding the papers. Jean met her at the bottom, giggling and tugging her skirt.
"Where've you been, Maman?"
"In the attic. I was looking through some things."
"Papa's been looking for you. He wants to talk to you about dinner."
"All right."
Marius appeared in the doorway, and smiled at her. "You're covered in cobweb."
She laughed. "Is it becoming? Here, look at this."
Marius took the papers, and read them through. He looked up at her, and smirked lovingly. "How strange. She loved all the students? Goodness, I was the lucky one, wasn't I?"
"Oh, you were. I love you, silly student."
He pressed the papers back in her hand as he kissed her cheek. "And I love you. But darling, about dinner--"
Cosette folded the papers away and slipped them in a pocket of her dress. She was too happy to pursue them any further.
Now she loved just one student.
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