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In 1834, Marius and Cosette decide to leave Gillenormand’s estate. Though the old man had provided everything they needed, Marius finds he cannot shake the ghost of his father enough to continue to live with the man who kept him from him. Cosette, too, grief creeping over her like frost on a flower, agrees. It’s time for them to leave the cobweb-filled old mansion and seek their own life.
They move to a town a little outside of Paris, small but not too small, and get a nice house for themselves with the money Cosette’s father left her. It’s big enough to raise a family in, and that’s what they plan to do. Marius gets a job at the local law firm, and it doesn’t pay for the luxurious lifestyle they enjoyed at Marius’s grandfather’s house, but it’s more than enough to make ends meet.
And so they live. Cosette buys flowers at the market, Marius broods in his study, they love, and they laugh.
In 1836, they have their first child. The baby is healthy and rosy-cheeked, with a head of thin dark-blonde hair and bright brown eyes. They name him Jean-Georges, for both of their fathers. He’s a quieter baby than most, except for nights, where he cries a storm until one of the new parents goes to comfort him.
Jean-Georges grows up, healthy and happy. Marius tells him stories, with a cracking voice, of kind young men he knew as a youth. The baby boy is too young to be curious about what has become of them, and Marius finds solace in that, at least.
Jean-Georges is four when Cosette gets pregnant again. This time, there are two babies, a little girl and a little boy. The girl is named Eleonore, and the boy Felicien. Marius feels as if the ghost of a certain Felix Courfeyrac is looking over his shoulder, and he smiles a pained smile at the name Cosette unknowingly chose.
When Jean-Georges is six and the twins are two, Marius takes ill. The fever passes quickly with the help of the town’s doctor, but scarcely a few days later, Eleonore becomes ill. Soon after, so does Jean-Georges. While Jean-Georges’s illness is short-lived, little Eleonore hovers between life and death for a number of days. Cosette prays. Marius does too, if to a God he’s not sure he still believes in.
In the end, Eleonore recovers, pale-faced and shaky. Jean-Georges is constantly at the doctor’s side once he’s well enough to walk around, asking questions about all sorts of treatments. Marius’s heart clenches a little. Cosette smiles.
Jean-Georges starts school, and he’s a studious little thing even as a child. He complains of not being able to see the chalkboard, and the doctor suggests he wear glasses. Marius sees him and thinks of another, with skin as dark as Jean-Georges is pale, also with glasses and a nose often in books.
Cosette and Marius lose the next two pregnancies. Both times, Cosette sobs, and Marius holds her while wondering how much more grief his heart can take. It’s not until 1845 that they finally have another child, a little girl whom Marius names Adele, after his late mother. Noble one, the name means, and Marius can almost see Enjolras shake his head.
Eleonore and Felicien start their schooling as well. Cosette insists on Eleonore having an education, just as her mother did. They don’t take to it as much as Jean-Georges does, but Eleonore is praised for her handwriting and Felicien makes friends quickly and easily. Golden-haired Adele learns how to walk and talk. And the little family is happy. For once, the sixth of June comes and goes and Marius barely notices.
Then comes 1848, and the barricades rise again. Marius hears about it from the newspapers, and ghosts once again crowd his vision. He blinks away the tears. Another republic, he thinks. He hopes his friends, wherever they are, are happy.
Adele is four when Marius pays a man to paint a portrait of their little family. Jean-Georges stays still the entire time, as does Eleonore, but Felicien and Adele fidget. They hang the picture on the wall in front of the mantle. Cosette and Marius decide not to have any more children- Adele’s birth was hard and the doctor suggested not to try for more, as it could strain Cosette far too much.
The children grow up. Adele peeks over Marius’s shoulder at the morning newspaper as soon as she learns to read. Eleonore plays in the garden and Felicien decides he’s in love with a girl in his class. Jean-Georges takes on an interest in medicine. Cosette tends to their every need, and Marius tells them stories. One night, Adele asks what has happened to the people from the stories, and if she can ever meet them. From that point on, Marius doesn’t tell stories anymore.
At eighteen, Jean-Georges announces that he’s leaving for Paris, to study medicine. He has top marks in his school, and has been accepted. Cosette cries the day he leaves, but Marius shakes Jean-Georges’s hand and says how proud he is of him. Fourteen-year-old Eleonore and Felicien ask when he’ll be back, and nine-year-old Adele begs him to bring back interesting stories, since Papa never tells them now.
Jean-Georges visits at Christmas and over summer, until he graduates and takes a residency position in Lyon. Occasionally, the family will travel across the worn roads to visit him. Eleonore will read him little stories she’s written, and Felicien will wax poetic about Florelle, the girl he’s crushed on since childhood and whom finally seems to return his feelings. Adele will ask him to read to her from his textbooks, and then complain when she finds them boring.
All too soon, Felicien leaves for law school, following in his father’s footsteps. Instead of a defense attorney, though, Felicien becomes a public prosecutor. Florelle goes with him, and they settle in a country town a little ways away from Marius and Cosette’s. The wedding is held in August, and Marius and Cosette congratulate the happy couple. It’s bittersweet, they feel, now that two of their four children have left to start their own lives. Only Eleonore, who wants to focus on writing, and Adele, who at sixteen is still too young to leave the home.
For her part, Adele takes an interest in politics, reading every republican tract her father keeps in his library. Marius sees something of Enjolras in her, a passion and certainty, though Adele runs hot where Enjolras ran cold. There is another Emperor now (Marius despairs for his friends’ dream), but Adele, a fiery young thing, just tosses her head and says if the Emperor takes issue, he can come and take her books himself.
(There are much worse things the Emperor could do to Adele than take her books, Marius knows, but he keeps his mouth shut. She’s only sixteen, she’ll learn soon enough.)
Adele is nineteen when she tells her mother and father that she’s leaving for Paris, that the cosmopolitan calls to her more than their sleepy little town can. Marius’s heart clenches, and Cosette asks her to reconsider, but Adele is immovable. They ask if she has a sweetheart. She says she doesn’t care for such things.
Felicien writes to tell Marius and Cosette that he and Florelle have had a daughter, Charlotte. The new grandparents quickly plan a trip out to meet their new granddaughter.
Adele writes to Marius about life in Paris, but is vague about what exactly she’s doing there. Her letters fill with rhetoric that the parents worry will place her- and them- under suspicion, and Marius chastises her to be more careful.
Eleonore publishes her first piece in a magazine, and tends to the flowers as they flourish in the garden. Marius pointedly does not think of Prouvaire.
Jean-Georges meets a woman, Marie, with earth-dark skin and curly black hair. Some oppose their union- the priest actually refuses to marry them, but Jean-Georges doesn’t care and takes the common-law certification instead. He’s successful in his doctor’s practice now, and the townspeople silently agree that he is allowed his secrets.
It’s not until 1869, after Felicien has had his second child, that things go terribly wrong. It’s Christmas, and finally, all of them are together at the Pontmercy household. Adele is visiting from Paris, Jean-Georges and Marie come home from Lyon, and Felicien brings Florelle and two-year-old Charlotte and bounces baby Maxime on his knee.
At dinner, the conversation turns to Felicien’s work as a prosecution lawyer. He brings up a case, casually, that involved a young man involved in publishing work that challenged the legitimacy of Napoleon III. Felicien had been instrumental in his conviction and subsequent sentence to several years in jail.
Adele stands up, then. “How could you side with them, Felicien?”
“I’m doing my job, Adele,” he replies. “What does it matter to you?”
“A woman’s place is not in politics,” Florelle chimes in. “God above!”
“I don’t care!” Adele shouts. “The man did nothing wrong! The true criminal is the one who seizes power from the ashes of a republic!”
Marius sighs, pushing away memories. “Felicien, Adele is right. I do not support the conviction of men who did nothing except express themselves.”
“Where does it end then, father? Rioting? Barricades in the streets?” Felicien exclaims. Marius pales.
“Felicien, Adele, calm down. Felicien is only doing his job,” Cosette says.
Adele glares daggers. “Then you are no longer my brother.”
In the end, Felicien leaves early, taking Florelle and the children with him. Cosette entreats him to stay, but he only says that he will not fight both father and daughter at once. Snow swirls outside the windowpanes.
Christmas brings little joy that year. Come springtime, Felicien has stopped writing entirely.
Adele’s letters, too, become fewer and further between. Eleonore’s writing grows sadder. Jean-Georges brings bad news on his next visit- Marie had gotten pregnant, but lost it early on.
1871 comes, and brings with it the red banner of the Commune. After the joy, however, comes the downfall as the government’s soldiers brutally slaughter the insurgents. Marius and Cosette, one summer afternoon, open the door to receive the news: Adele is dead.
“Marius, don’t fret,” Cosette says, rubbing his shoulder, and it strikes Marius how similar it sounds to another woman’s assurance so many years ago. “She fought for our freedom.”
“She was the same age as them- as him,” Marius sputters. “Twenty-six. Why do I remain if it is only to lose and have lost so much?”
“Marius,” Cosette says, sterner. Grief has always had less control over Cosette, as if repelled by someone so full of life. “Remember, you have three others. Do not make them think they aren’t enough.”
Jean-Georges hears the news and aches inside. She was only nine when he left for the Polytechnic, and he had only visited on holidays. He’d known she was always strong-willed as a child, and opinionated as she grew, but he did not know just how far her convictions ran. In his mind, she would always be the little girl in the red dress would would make a nuisance of herself while Jean-Georges tried to study, begging him to read to her from his textbooks.
“Marie?” Jean-Georges calls out. His wife is pregnant again, and they were both so hopeful, just days ago.
“Yes, love?” Her brown eyes sparkle with sympathy.
“If the baby is a girl, I have an idea for a name.”
Eleonore sobs into Cosette’s arms, a child again if only for a little while, angry at the world. Eleonore leaves that night for Felicien’s village, as if trying to outrun the grief. She saw Adele more, living at home, but understood her less, and she races the pain and runs towards the brother who she hasn’t seen for two long years. He’d written to her, though not to her parents, and she’d treasured each letter as though it were solid gold.
Felicien is almost ready to turn in for the night when Eleonore bursts into his door. He’s surprised to see her here, without warning, and it’s even more surprising to see her eyes red and wet, as if she has been crying.
“‘Leo? What’s happened?”
Eleonore says two words before bursting into sobs. “Adele’s dead.”
“What? How?”
“The uprisings. In Paris. She lived there, remember? She was one of them, one of the fighters.” Felicien blanches in disbelief, except- of course. Of course Adele would join the Commune. Of course his wild younger sister would join the fight.
“Papa?” asks a voice. His four-year-old daughter, Charlotte, peeks around the door. Maxime, only two, is surely somewhere nearby. “Papa, why is Aunt Eleonore here? Why are you crying?”
Felicien bends down, slowly, kneeling in front of Charlotte. All of a sudden, he feels fragile as glass, sharp as nails. “You had another aunt. And she’s dead.”
When it comes to grief, Jean-Georges bruises, Eleonore bleeds, and Felicien breaks.
Barely half a year after Adele dies, tragedy strikes again. Marie, Jean-Georges’s wife, dies in childbirth, leaving behind a baby girl for Jean-Georges to raise all on his own. Through the haze of grief, he names her Adeline Marie Pontmercy- not a replacement for Adele, never a replacement, but a tribute all the same.
Adeline grows. Felicien brings his wife and Adeline’s two cousins, Charlotte and Maxime, on occasional visits. Jean-Georges watches the seasons change with an ache in his heart and a light in his eyes.
In 1882, Marius takes ill, and one day, he falls asleep for a short nap and never wakes up. Four years later, at age 70, Cosette grows sick and follows him. They both are surrounded by family. They are buried together.
The sun rises. The sun sets. The Earth spins. The family Pontmercy lives on.
And so it goes.