636 Les Miserables
CHAPTER I
THE WATER QUESTION
AT MONTFERMEIL
Montfermeil is situated between Livry and Chelles, on
the southern edge of that lofty table-land which separates
the Ourcq from the Marne. At the present day it is a tol-
erably large town, ornamented all the year through with
plaster villas, and on Sundays with beaming bourgeois.
In 1823 there were at Montfermeil neither so many white
houses nor so many well-satisfied citizens: it was only a vil-
lage in the forest. Some pleasure-houses of the last century
were to be met with there, to be sure, which were recog-
nizable by their grand air, their balconies in twisted iron,
and their long windows, whose tiny panes cast all sorts of
varying shades of green on the white of the closed shutters;
but Montfermeil was none the less a village. Retired cloth-
merchants and rusticating attorneys had not discovered it
as yet; it was a peaceful and charming place, which was not
on the road to anywhere: there people lived, and cheaply,
that peasant rustic life which is so bounteous and so easy;
only, water was rare there, on account of the elevation of