Lisette

Chapter 52 ~ All the Right Things to Say

[Apologies for there being such a long gap in updates - life kept getting in the way! Hopefully slightly more frequent (if still rather irregular) service will now resume.]

That evening at the Musain, I took along the notebook I had bought for Gavroche when we (Musichetta, Claudine, and I) had gone shopping at the Palais Royal with Eponine.  Her absence at the Musain still felt like a gaping hole, though few of the others seemed to notice. I'd given up trying to ask Gavroche, and even Grantaire never so much as mentioned her any more. 

The notebook had sat at the back of Enjolras's desk, half forgotten about, over the last few months, and it was only by chance that I'd spotted it amongst the mess of papers. For all that Enjolras was regimented and ordered in so many things, his desk was almost invariably a mess. He knew where everything on it was, but when he asked me to pass him a particular book or piece of paper, I was never able to spot it between everything else.

Gavroche, who had recently seized upon the idea of trying to read some of the medical text books that Joly and occasionally Combeferre brought with them to the Musain, was sat with Joly when we arrived. His back was to the door, and I couldn't resist creeping up on him. I only said "Boo!" quietly, but it was enough to make him jump out of his skin.

"That's not fair!"

"Isn't it? You've done it to me before!" 

"Yes, but that's different!"

"Is it, now?"

"You're older than me."

"That I can't deny. What are you reading about?"

"It's a chapter about dissection!"

I looked at Joly. 

"Are you sure this is suitable?"

He shrugged. 

"It's not like he's never seen a dead body before."

"Well, as long as you don't plan on staging any dissections in here. I suppose it's not entirely beyond -"

"I don't think I like the man writing this," Gavroche broke in.

I leaned over to look at the book closer. 

"What's the matter with it?"

"He's saying that doctors need more bodies to dissect and learn from, and that there aren't enough criminals, so we should use the bodies of poor people because they don't have friends and no one cares about them so it won't matter that they won't get a proper grave. Poor people do have friends! He's talking about us like we're things!"

"Perhaps you should write to him and say so," I said, sitting down at the table with him.

"I'm not sure that's quite what he means," said Joly, taking the book and turning a few pages. "He explains a bit later that he'd use the bodies of poor people who'd died in hospitals and hadn't been claimed by any friends and relatives."

"But that happens anyway, doesn't it?" I asked. It had never happened to anyone I knew personally, but I'd heard of people going to hospital, dying, and being taken by an anatomist because no one had come to claim their body.

"It does here. It's not the practice in England, where this man is from. This book's a translation of some of his writings. It's interesting to see how their medical practice differs from ours."

"He's still talking about us like we're things," said Gavroche, taking the book back. "I know he writes long excuses to say he isn't really and he would protect us as much as he would rich people if we had friends, but I don't think he would really."