A Bed of Roses; A Les Mis Love Story

Prologue

Life is not a bed of roses. My father used to say that quite often when we were younger. He was a cynical man; a man battered by the tests of time. My siblings and I always questioned him about his past. Mother told us that he was once a brave, vivid man. He was a revolutionary, fueled by the urge to bring forth a new dawn. Yet even after they won, he watched his beloved France fall deeper into the abyss; the light of a new day falling into oblivion. His dreams faded away, and not long after I turned one, he became a miserable, wretched drunk. One day, while in a drunken stupor on the couch, he chuckled and felt that he had some sort of epiphany. When we asked what it was, he laughed.

"I've been wrong all these years, my loves. Life is indeed a bed of roses. Beautiful, endearing on the outside, yet once you step in, you're jabbed by the thorns of misfortune."

When he woke up, he had no recollection of this. But it made all of us realize that he would never be the same man he once was; that he accepted his fate of misery. No longer the man who named his first daughter Rose, after red, his favorite color; no longer the man who loved his wife; no longer the man who stood for freedom.

Vézelay was a quiet town. Mother and Father moved here from Paris after the revolution to start a family. When they first had me, our family was a seemingly perfect one; Monsieur and Madame Garnier and little Rose. Mother was a respectable seamstress in the town, while Father was an aspiring musician. Of course, their jobs brought little money, and as my father became more and more of a drunk, our savings trickled lower. Eight years later, our family of three had become a family of six, with the arrival of my twin brothers Adrien and Clément, along with my little sister Amarante. We had no money; Mother worked to support us while Father wasted in pubs. Life became more and more miserable.

Yet, there was still a beacon of hope in my life. My siblings and I were independent, and with our mother constantly working and our father constantly drinking, we had time to explore the streets of Vézelay. While Adrien and Clément ran rambunctiously through the fields and Amarante played with other girls in the square, I spent my time in the library. When I first went, the village elders laughed at me. But my desire to learn soon wore them down, and they finally accepted me. They all taught me to read and write; soon enough, I was reading Voltaire. Reading and learning was a passion of mine, for it helped distract me from my father and the struggles of our family.

One day, I arrived home from the library to find the police at my doorstep. We were informed that my father had been in a bar-fight somewhere near the edge of town; he had been dead for a week before his body was found. Of course, it was a sad occasion, but I hadn't seen him in three years, and all he had been at home was a drunk bastard. Only a small part of me grieved the remnant of his younger self; the kind, strong man who once was.

I continued to immerse myself in literature. At thirteen years old, I read Èmile by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, a book that disgusted me beyond belief. Rousseau was a man my mother respected, her ideologies lining up with his exactly. But he often mentioned the inferiority of women to men. Who was to say that a woman's role was only to be spouses or mothers; that they were not as rational as men? When I asked the elders what they thought, they all shrugged and seemed aloof. Weren't these the same people who fought in a revolution for an equal France? I read about the Société des Républicaines Révolutionnaires, a society formed by women during the revolution, but was outlawed by the revolutionaries new government. How stupid, I thought. No wonder their revolution has not seemed to change anything, especially for women, in France.

The next week, I came back from the library to our small home. Amarante, just five years old, came running out the door towards me.

"Rosie, somethings wrong with Maman. She's ghostly white and she's coughing! Hurry!" she panted breathlessly.

I sprinted into the house, upstairs to Mother's room. She sat there, propped in bed, coughing violently.

"Rose, my darling. Come here. I wish to speak to you." She croaked, gasping desperately.

"Mother! Are you alright? Amarante, go fetch the doctor now!" I trembled.

"My beautiful daughter, I fear that I may not have much time left. Please, you must help. Care for the children, please."

"No, don't worry, you will be fine. I promise I'll take care of you and our family." I replied, as reassuringly as I could, with tears in my eyes.

The doctor came and examined my mother.

"I'm afraid that your mother has consumption. There is nothing we can do. She will be lucky if she survives a fortnight."

My heart dropped. I gave him my last twenty sous as he hurried out the door. Two weeks left for my mother. From that day on, there were no more days spent in the library. Every hour of daylight I spent sewing, taking my mother's place. My mother's passed away one week later. We had no money for a burial, so she was taken away to be placed in an unmarked grave.  She did not deserve to die, for she was a simple, kind woman, albeit uneducated and occasionally ignorant, but still a gentle, pure soul tainted by my father, a man who had once loved her.

Life became even more of a struggle. We couldn't pay the rent on our already tiny house, so we were forced to live on the streets. The last of my pride was gone; the Garnier family, once respectable, were reduced to beggars. Being a seamstress brought in a mere couple of sous a day. Adrien and Clément pitched in by helping at the butcher shop, while Amarante earned a tiny bit by braiding the hair of the daughters of the rich occasionally. We would be lucky to afford a loaf of bread every few weeks. My heart broke for my siblings, once happy and innocent, now starving and suffering. Our little family kept our faith, hoping for a new tomorrow, but tomorrow never came.