In Paris in 1817 there were four students fond of a good time and four young women who loved them. Fantine, with her beautiful fair hair, loved Tholomyès, a man rather old to be a student. He was her first love, and she loved him as if he were her husband. One Sunday the eight of them spent the whole day on outings round the edge of the city. That evening at a restaurant the men went out to fetch a surprise, leaving word that a letter should be handed over once an hour had passed. The letter said their parents had called them home, that after nearly two happy years the women should bear them no grudge, and that dinner was paid for.
The women laughed and called it a fine joke, and Fantine laughed with them. An hour later, back in her room, she wept. She had a child.
Afterward Fantine had a public letter-writer send Tholomyès three letters, and not one was answered. Ten months later she decides to go back to her home town of Montreuil-sur-Mer. She sells everything she has for two hundred francs, and once her small debts are paid about eighty are left. One spring morning Fantine, twenty-two years old, leaves Paris with the child on her back, the child dressed in all her silks and ribbons and herself in coarse cotton.