Helene Thenardier (1788-) was a French innkeeper and criminal who was the wife of con man and Patron-Minette gang leader Alain Thenardier.
Biography[]
The Thenardiers with Cosette, 1823
Helene Thenardier was born in Montfermeil, Ile-de-France, France in 1788, and she married Alain Thenardier, a con man who was twelve years her senior. They ran "The Sergeant at Waterloo" inn in Montfermeil during the early 19th century, and they were known to cheat and rob their customers through exorbitant convenience fees, diluted food and drinks, and the outright theft of their belongings. Alain and Helene had two daughters, Eponine and Azelma, and they also reluctantly took in the girl Cosette at the behest of Cosette's mother Fantine Thibault, who paid them weekly for her care. The Thenardiers spoiled their daughters and abused Cosette, with Helene having Cosette sweep the inn's floors and gather water from the well in the woods. In December 1823, Jean Valjean, the former employer of Cosette's mother, arrived in Montfermeil to retrieve Cosette from the Thenardiers as per Fantine's last wish, and Valjean paid the Thenardiers 1,500 francs to secure Cosette's release from their custody. Helene later chastised Alain for giving Cosette away for so cheap, and, shortly after, they were forced to close down their inn and move to Paris, where they lived under the assumed surname "Jondrette".
Madame Thenardier dressed as a revolutionary
The Thenardiers proceeded to engage in even more cons, sending their first son, Gavroche, into the care of Monsieur Gillenormand's charity for orphans to obtain child support, and also soliciting donations from philanthropists while posing as beggars. In 1832, they attempted to rob Jean Valjean after spotting him on a public street, but they were foiled by the arrival of Inspector Etienne Javert, who let them go after Alain identified their victim as Valjean, the man that Javert had been tracking down since 1815. While Alain would later fail in his and the Patron-Minette gang's attempted robbery of Valjean's home on the Rue de Plumet, the Thenardiers found another opportunity for profit when the June Rebellion broke out in June 1832, and Helene dressed as a revolutionary, infiltrated the Les Amis de l'ABC student group, and stole some of their guns and other possessions for resale.
After the revolution's suppression, the Thenardiers posed as nobles in order to sneak into Marius Pontmercy's wedding to Cosette with the objective of extorting Marius, as Alain claimed to have seen the bride's father Jean Valjean murder and rob a revolutionary student in the sewers. However, Marius identified the ring taken by Thenardier from the sewers as his own ring, and he realized that Valjean was the man who had saved him in the sewers that night. Pontmercy then forced Alain to tell him where Valjean was, and he paid the Thenardiers 1,500 francs to leave and never see him again. Ultimately, the Thenardiers moved to the United States, where Alain Thenardier became a slave trader.