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The lecture is dismissed, and the hum of young men attempting to be quiet gives way to the hubbub of young men released from constraint. Combeferre hears little, for he is tracing the maze of associations the lecture raised: the classification of animals, the nature of progress and extinction, the question whether animals evolve or have been created and destroyed and created anew over a series of mass extinctions. He has just seen Cuvier illustrate by his encyclopedic comprehension of bones and organs that species are immutable and evolution impossible: the ibis of the Pharaohs and the ibis of today are the same bird; the gargantuan lizards of the past remain in the past, extinguished in a cataclysm with no survivors. And still Combeferre's heart belongs to Lamarck's slow and incremental march of progress.
He is pondering spans of time so vast the human imagination cannot grasp them when he stumbles into the black coat of a halted figure.
"I beg your pardon--"
"Monsieur Combeferre, I think?"
The voice is a feminine one, startling in this place. Combeferre looks up, becoming aware for the first time of the dwindling crowd and the person before him, thin and on the tall side, dressed in black, with a striking and imperious look.
On consideration he thinks she really is a woman, though under her greatcoat she wears a waistcoat and cravat. He judges so by her skirt, plain and no-nonsense though it is, and by her hair, pinned up under her top hat and curled at her temples in the clusters he has some vague idea are the current fashion.
"--Mademoiselle?"
"Lister," she says. "Anne Lister. I've been taking lessons from a Monsieur Julliart, but he and I have had to part ways. He said you might be more sympathetic to my case."
Her speech is rapid and forthright, and her French, though English accented, is good. Combeferre frowns--she cannot mean "case" in a medical sense, for he is only a student still.
"Your case?"
"Dissection. The heads of the Paris Medical School think a room of corpses being hacked at by adolescent boys is inappropriate for the sensibilities of women. Very right of them I'm sure, but I wasn't looking for them to admit women, I was looking for them to admit me. Monsieur Julliart has been teaching me on Monsieur Audouin's recommendation, but we've run out of things he's willing to bring to my rooms."
"It is an injustice," Combeferre says with warmth. "I have known many women to be the equals of the young men we admit into medical school. It is not as if our first year students are impervious to the shock of the dissection room, and if the presence of women would place a damper on some of their high-spirited antics there, I cannot but see that it would improve matters for everyone. But--I have rounds at the Necker I must get to. Might we speak as we walk?"
She falls into step beside him.
The winter air is chill, and Combeferre buttons up his coat against it, skirting the patches of ice and snow on the pavement. Miss Lister carries a stout cane like most of the gentlemen they pass and cracks the ice with energy.
"I met Monsieur Cuvier thanks to friends at the embassy. He invited me to attend. I find his theories fascinating."
"I fear they were half the reason I collided with you earlier," Combeferre says, smiling. "The other half... I don't suppose you've read Lamarck?"
She has--enough to speak at length. Her voice has the quality of a boulder rolling downhill, bouncing among disparate subjects at first but gaining momentum as she goes. She strikes Combeferre as one who has thought much about subjects upon which she has had few opportunities to speak. He watches her sharp and animated profile as she strides down the street. A world, he thinks, where such a person has not been permitted a university education is an unjust world.
But it is not as if he lacks a thousand other proofs of that.
"An extraordinary idea!" she says. "Imagine if our striving or indolence should alter the very organs we're constructed of--and not only for us, but for our grandchildren's grandchildren, should we mischance to have any. Can that be right? How curious, the scale of time Lamarck claims. Eons of change went into men and beasts, but we have reached an age where man may accomplish in a fortnight what once was impossible in a century."
"You believe in progress," Combeferre says, smiling.
"Emphatically!"
He is entirely charmed.
His feet have followed the route without his awareness, and he is startled to discover they are reaching the stone wall and iron gates of the Hôpital Necker. He has lost track not only of time but also the request made of him. He pauses alongside the concierge's lodge.
"Tell me of the dissections you've performed, Miss Lister."
"Two rabbits," she says, "a human ear, a hand--my God, what a thing it is to cut at the very appendage one is cutting with! And then a woman's head. It was extraordinary, seeing the brain like a piece of meat, and for that to be all that we are--" She glances up with challenge in her eye. "But the brain isn't all we are, Monsieur. Is it?"
"You wish to dissect a full cadaver."
"It's absurd that I can't. I've asked, but there's apparently no option. M. Julliart won't bring me one--that's where he draws the line, at common nudity! Does he expect I should faint? Imagine being admonished so by a boy half one's age--I should be inclined to take offense, except it wouldn't help."
Combeferre is not half her age; at a guess, she is perhaps a decade or so his senior. He certainly has no interest in curbing her enthusiasm.
"I am indeed sympathetic to your case," he says. "But cadavers are in short supply. Moreover, they're difficult to smuggle into residential apartments, as friends of mine have learned to their chagrin. I fear it's beyond my capabilities."
Miss Lister mutters under her breath and crushes another patch of ice with her cane.
"Or rather," he adds thoughtfully, "a full-sized cadaver is. I am an interne here at the Necker, and I spend some hours each week at the Hôpital des Enfants Malades next door"--he nods towards the gates--"and at the Maison d'Accouchement by the Observatory--I trust you really are not inclined to squeamishness?"
"Try me."
He smiles. "I may be able to provide something suitable. How does Saturday afternoon sound?"
She looks startled for an instant, then she attempts to stifle the grin that spreads across her face.
"Saturday will do very nicely."
--
Miss Lister's rooms in the Rue Saint-Victor are conveniently situated in the heart of the Latin Quarter, a mere ten minute's walk from the Hôtel-Dieu. The concierge does not question the bundle in Combeferre's arms, which is for the best. He ascends to an upper story and knocks.
"I fear I must answer my own door in these quarters," Miss Lister says. "I used to have very comfortable rooms with my aunt, but she didn't appreciate certain scientific endeavors--not near her breakfast table, anyway. This seemed preferable."
The accommodations are small, but the light is good, and there is more than one room, an advantage when using one's own chambers as a dissecting theater. Miss Lister shows Combeferre into a study where a sheet has been laid upon a table beneath a good window. Combeferre lays down his burden.
"Let me show you my curiosities." Miss Lister draws him to a tall oak cabinet and with pride shows him a skeleton and several skulls. He peruses her sundry jars of dissected matter in mineral spirits, then she suggests they begin.
Combeferre lifts away the wrappings, revealing a small and perfect male infant, cold, blue-tinged, and a little undersized.
Miss Lister goes quiet.
"Stillborn," he explains.
He lets Miss Lister contemplate the cadaver as he lays out the instruments on the writing desk beside them. He steals glances at her as he works; she remains very still. It is not as if the boys of seventeen or eighteen who enter medical school are sanguine about such things either at first. Most take months to grow acclimated. Combeferre took longer than most.
When the instruments are arranged, he asks quietly, "Will this do?"
"Do?" she says. "My God, I thought I'd never have the privilege! Where do we start?"
Combeferre bids her take up the knife. She turns pale, but her eyes sparkle.
"The dissection of a fetus," he says, "is a delicate operation due to its size and fragility, but it proceeds in the same fashion as any other dissection. We will begin with two incisions across the abdomen through the skin and integuments: the first from the sternum to the os pubis, the second crossing the first horizontally below the umbilicus."
Miss Lister brings down a book of anatomy from the shelf. She leafs through it until she has her place, and they begin. For as long as the wintry daylight lasts, they are at no loss for happy occupation.
When the light is quite gone, they lay a sheet over their work and open the window, letting the chill from outside preserve it for the following day. They wash up, close the study door, and adjourn to a sitting room where Miss Lister lights the lamps and pours them each a brandy.
"Well, Monsieur Combeferre," she says, sipping her drink. "It's been a delight. Thank you for being--" she gestures vaguely, as if looking for a word. "Less of an idiot than most medical students I've talked to."
"How long are you in Paris?"
"As long as I can manage. It's far better than Yorkshire."
"Yorkshire!" he exclaims. "I've always wished to see the north of England. You are not, by chance, anywhere near Liverpool or Manchester?"
It must be an odd question, for she nearly chokes on her drink. "Good Lord!" she says, laughing. "What can a Parisian medical student want with Manchester and Liverpool?"
"The railway being built between them," he says, "will be the first inter-city steam locomotive line in the world. I hope to see it one day, if only I can find time--but, alas, the life of the medical student is a busy one. One has many opportunities to uncover the past and few to glimpse the future, yet the future is being built almost to your door."
Miss Lister examines his face thoughtfully, and then she smiles, a quieter, more thoughtful smile than he has seen. "Home has never been a good place for me," she says, "but I've long been fascinated by the railroad. I mean to ride it as soon as I get the chance."
"Do so," Combeferre says earnestly. "And when you have, please, if you would, write to me of your impressions. I should like very much to know them. It may be some years before I have any opportunity myself."
"I will," she says. "And very gladly."
--
Combeferre arrives at Miss Lister's rooms the next morning, eager to recommence.
"Not a churchgoing man, Monsieur Combeferre?" she asks drily. He recalls belatedly that Sunday may signify things other than fewer obligations at the hospital.
"I prefer finding divinity in God's creations," he says, "over being lectured on it by an old man ordained to one more ancient and outdated hierarchy." At the wry twist of her mouth he adds, "But if you were intending to go--"
"Not at all. Come in."
They work mostly in silence. Miss Lister turns her attentions to the organs of the abdomen, consulting the anatomy book on the desk and only occasionally looking to Combeferre for explanations. Her silence today is not much like her garrulousness of yesterday, and he wonders whether his irreligiousness offends her. Being unneeded, he takes the opportunity to satisfy his curiosity on one or two questions of fetal development and to examine the cadaver for those anatomic abnormalities so endemic to stillbirths.
Some time later, he hears a sigh and finds Miss Lister mopping her brow with a troubled frown. She must feel his look, for she glances up.
"Lunch?" she asks.
Once they have cleaned up and adjourned to the other room, she is more forthcoming; it seems the problem was not Combeferre but a falling out with a friend.
Or rather, he amends as the tale goes on, a goodly number of friends. It appears she has been looking for a female companion to share rooms with, and while there have been several candidates, none have proved suitable. Several are jealous of each other, several have no idea there are others to be jealous of, and all are disappointing to one degree or other.
Combeferre makes such sympathetic noises as seem appropriate.
He contemplates Miss Lister as she talks, pondering the nature of these friendships; in truth, he has wondered since the beginning. He is as preferentially fond of the society of men as he suspects she is of women, and he does not lack for friends of similar mind.
He broaches the question cautiously, in the usual way it is done--that is, he makes a few classical allusions from which a person of particular interests will draw particular inferences. Miss Lister looks innocent in a way innocent people tend not to and professes not to comprehend his meaning.
Combeferre shrugs and smiles and does not press the matter. It strikes him as a pity that a strong-minded person of considerable intelligence should have the misfortune of being English.
--
"It is unjust," Combeferre says, "that we exclude women."
The back room of the Cafe Musain is loud with talk and laughter. Enjolras sits in his usual corner in the shadows of the ruddy firelight, listening with quiet contentment to his men. He looks up, frowning slightly, as Combeferre sits.
It is not precisely that Enjolras and Miss Lister resemble each other, Combeferre thinks: where her hair is dark, his is fair; where her face is captivating for its quickness of expression, his is arresting for its marble serenity. Yet there is a similarity in their magnetism and forcefulness. Moreover, Enjolras's rosy cheek is as beardless as Miss Lister's and will remain so for precisely the same reason.
Combeferre would bite off his tongue before he admitted it aloud, but it is their resemblance that made him warm to Miss Lister so quickly.
"You may say few women have the mind or the heart for it. Very well! I expect they do not. Few men do either. But those women who do should not be disbarred. Our aim is to fight injustice--is this not an injustice?"
"You have someone you believe should be admitted?"
Combeferre hesitates. "No. Not yet, at least. There are relevant points we have not discussed. Though she seems promising, I have not tried her to the degree I would like."
"But?"
"I meant what I said. That women are excluded from our ranks is absurd. Whether or not my friend Miss Lister should be admitted does not signify--even if she is not personally suited, she is proof there are intelligent and strong-minded women who would be equal to it."
"It would be a distraction. You know how my men are on the subject and in the company of women."
"Has it crossed your mind the fault may not be with the women?"
Enjolras sighs. "What would you have me do, Combeferre?"
"I wish you to meet a friend of mine."
--
The wine shop to which Combeferre invites Miss Lister has no particular reputation for sedition. He hopes to relocate later to more favorable ground, but he has never precisely tried her on the subject of civil unrest. Still, he cannot see how anyone so enamored with the future could fail to see the necessity of revolution.
They are early, but Miss Lister is earlier. She smiles, raising a hand in greeting. Combeferre catches the moment she notices Enjolras, for she starts, and then her face transforms with a sudden, vibrant smile. It occurs to Combeferre entirely too late that a woman accustomed to elements of male dress--and perhaps to the company of other women thus dressed--might read easily certain facts about Enjolras invisible to the general populace.
"Mademoiselle Lister, Monsieur Enjolras," Combeferre says. It is possible he gives excessive emphasis to the word Monsieur, for Enjolras glances his way with a faintly upraised eyebrow. Mercifully, he looks more wry than annoyed.
The room is smokey and loud with talk and the clink of glasses. They adjourn to a table in a dim corner. Miss Lister has not taken her eyes from Enjolras. Enjolras is politely pretending not to notice.
"Monsieur Enjolras," she says, leaning across the table, "I have had the pleasure of hearing a great deal about you. Your friend seems to hold you in very high esteem. Indeed--you strike me as a very singular person."
Enjolras lowers his eyes to the table. Combeferre attempts with some urgency to change the subject. Miss Lister presses on.
"They say Tiresius was the only one who ever saw the world from both sides, as it were," she says. "But for my part, I am not convinced that he--or she--was at all unique. Are you, Monsieur Enjolras?"
Enjolras jerks up his head, pale and terrible. His nostrils flare with that ire which haunts the dreams of many a too-forward student or grisette. His eyes flash in the candlelight, staring Anne Lister down.
Miss Lister sinks back, quelled into silence.
No one speaks for some minutes. When Enjolras is certain he has been understood, he resumes the conversation with cool politeness.
"Combeferre has told me you are interested in progress, Miss Lister."
"Very much so!" Her voice is a little loud, her smile a little wide; Combeferre has never before seen her unnerved. "He and I have spoken of advances in science, medicine, transportation, engineering--"
"Governments?"
"Governments! Not much. Why?"
"Tell me of the political and social questions you consider important in your country."
"You're looking for a civics lesson?"
"No, an opinion."
She shrugs. "Our governance is fine, more or less, if the reformers don't succeed in mucking it up."
Combeferre freezes. He dares not look at Enjolras.
"Ah," Enjolras says calmly. "Is there some danger of that?"
"More every day, I understand."
Combeferre inquires, with more hesitation than is his wont, about the progressive ideas under debate.
"It's all absurd," Miss Lister says. "Thank God France has put itself to rights again with a French king on the throne, and a sensible one at that. I've had the honor of being invited to parties at the British embassy where I've met some of your nobility. Most of them seem to agree Charles has the right idea."
For decades, Charles X has led the most ultra faction of the ultra-royalists. All of France knows he and his prime minister are planning a coup to reinstate absolutism. The only thing that can be said in the king's favor is that his ham-fisted grasping at power may finally push the populace to revolt. Combeferre is not sanguine enough about war to find comfort in that thought, though his friends do.
His cheeks burn. Enjolras's face is icy.
Miss Lister does not appear to notice.
"We, by contrast, are veering dangerously leftwards. Sweeping reforms, broadened manhood suffrage--possibly even universal, God help us. The only advantage I see to extending the franchise to common farmers is that their landlords can tell them what to do with it. I should never stand between a man and his conscience, of course, but if they pass any such legislation, believe me, I shan't rent my land to anyone who is not a Tory."
"But you believe in progress!" Combeferre exclaims. "This cannot be your real opinion! What is progress but universal wellbeing and the rights of man expanded and extended to all? You know how it hampers a person to be denied education, suffrage, rights--is it not unjust that children grow up unable to read? That entire communities have no say in their governance? And that is only free people! The treatment of prisoners--"
"I cannot see that prisoners are treated so badly as people say," Miss Lister interjects. "I had the privilege of visiting Coldbath Fields Prison several years ago, and I found the conditions eminently reasonable. They have a treadmill there which they have the prisoners walk on. I got on it myself for two or three minutes. I really cannot see how it could do anyone any harm."
The silence that follows lasts an eternity.
"It has been an illuminating evening," Enjolras says, rising. "But I must be going. Miss Lister."
He nods to her and lays a hand upon Combeferre's shoulder, in condolence. He departs without another word.
"So those are your politics," Combeferre says heavily.
"And not his, I take it?" Miss Lister examines Combeferre's slumped shoulders and defeated mien. "Or yours. Is it as bad as all that?"
Combeferre gets up. "I fear, Miss Lister, I will not be making our appointment next week. Nor any time thereafter."
"Damn." She tries to smile, but it is a bitter expression that falls away immediately. "So it's over, just like that? Over politics?"
"Over politics." Combeferre picks up his hat, fiddles with it unhappily, and puts it on. He dislikes leaving matters here; he cannot see any other place to leave them. "I did enjoy our other discussions."
"Damn," she says again.
"Indeed. We agree on that much."
"And I suppose," she says, "when I do finally ride the train to Liverpool, you will not wish to know what I think?"
Some dark constriction on Combeferre's heart releases. He smiles, if sadly.
"On the contrary. I should like to receive that letter very much."
"Expect it, then," Miss Lister says. "It has been a pleasure, Monsieur Combeferre."
"It has been," he says.