





And in the meantime, what had become of that mother who according to
the people at Montfermeil, seemed to have abandoned her child? Where
was she? What was she doing?

After leaving her little Cosette with the Thénardiers, she had
continued her journey, and had reached M. sur M.

This, it will be remembered, was in 1818.

Fantine had quitted her province ten years before. M. sur M. had
changed its aspect. While Fantine had been slowly descending from
wretchedness to wretchedness, her native town had prospered.

About two years previously one of those industrial facts which are the
grand events of small districts had taken place.

This detail is important, and we regard it as useful to develop it at
length; we should almost say, to underline it.

From time immemorial, M. sur M. had had for its special industry the
imitation of English jet and the black glass trinkets of Germany. This
industry had always vegetated, on account of the high price of the raw
material, which reacted on the manufacture. At the moment when Fantine
returned to M. sur M., an unheard-of transformation had taken place in
the production of “black goods.” Towards the close of 1815 a man, a
stranger, had established himself in the town, and had been inspired
with the idea of substituting, in this manufacture, gum-lac for resin,
and, for bracelets in particular, slides of sheet-iron simply laid
together, for slides of soldered sheet-iron.

This very small change had effected a revolution.

This very small change had, in fact, prodigiously reduced the cost of
the raw material, which had rendered it possible in the first place, to
raise the price of manufacture, a benefit to the country; in the second
place, to improve the workmanship, an advantage to the consumer; in the
third place, to sell at a lower price, while trebling the profit, which
was a benefit to the manufacturer.

Thus three results ensued from one idea.

In less than three years the inventor of this process had become rich,
which is good, and had made every one about him rich, which is better.
He was a stranger in the Department. Of his origin, nothing was known;
of the beginning of his career, very little. It was rumored that he had
come to town with very little money, a few hundred francs at the most.

It was from this slender capital, enlisted in the service of an
ingenious idea, developed by method and thought, that he had drawn his
own fortune, and the fortune of the whole countryside.

On his arrival at M. sur M. he had only the garments, the appearance,
and the language of a workingman.

It appears that on the very day when he made his obscure entry into the
little town of M. sur M., just at nightfall, on a December evening,
knapsack on back and thorn club in hand, a large fire had broken out in
the town-hall. This man had rushed into the flames and saved, at the
risk of his own life, two children who belonged to the captain of the
gendarmerie; this is why they had forgotten to ask him for his
passport. Afterwards they had learned his name. He was called Father
Madeleine.






He was a man about fifty years of age, who had a preoccupied air, and
who was good. That was all that could be said about him.

Thanks to the rapid progress of the industry which he had so admirably
reconstructed, M. sur M. had become a rather important centre of trade.
Spain, which consumes a good deal of black jet, made enormous purchases
there each year. M. sur M. almost rivalled London and Berlin in this
branch of commerce. Father Madeleine’s profits were such, that at the
end of the second year he was able to erect a large factory, in which
there were two vast workrooms, one for the men, and the other for
women. Any one who was hungry could present himself there, and was sure
of finding employment and bread. Father Madeleine required of the men
good will, of the women pure morals, and of all, probity. He had
separated the work-rooms in order to separate the sexes, and so that
the women and girls might remain discreet. On this point he was
inflexible. It was the only thing in which he was in a manner
intolerant. He was all the more firmly set on this severity, since M.
sur M., being a garrison town, opportunities for corruption abounded.
However, his coming had been a boon, and his presence was a godsend.
Before Father Madeleine’s arrival, everything had languished in the
country; now everything lived with a healthy life of toil. A strong
circulation warmed everything and penetrated everywhere. Slack seasons
and wretchedness were unknown. There was no pocket so obscure that it
had not a little money in it; no dwelling so lowly that there was not
some little joy within it.

Father Madeleine gave employment to every one. He exacted but one
thing: Be an honest man. Be an honest woman.

As we have said, in the midst of this activity of which he was the
cause and the pivot, Father Madeleine made his fortune; but a singular
thing in a simple man of business, it did not seem as though that were
his chief care. He appeared to be thinking much of others, and little
of himself. In 1820 he was known to have a sum of six hundred and
thirty thousand francs lodged in his name with Laffitte; but before
reserving these six hundred and thirty thousand francs, he had spent
more than a million for the town and its poor.

The hospital was badly endowed; he founded six beds there. M. sur M. is
divided into the upper and the lower town. The lower town, in which he
lived, had but one school, a miserable hovel, which was falling to
ruin: he constructed two, one for girls, the other for boys. He
allotted a salary from his own funds to the two instructors, a salary
twice as large as their meagre official salary, and one day he said to
some one who expressed surprise, “The two prime functionaries of the
state are the nurse and the schoolmaster.” He created at his own
expense an infant school, a thing then almost unknown in France, and a
fund for aiding old and infirm workmen. As his factory was a centre, a
new quarter, in which there were a good many indigent families, rose
rapidly around him; he established there a free dispensary.

At first, when they watched his beginnings, the good souls said, “He’s
a jolly fellow who means to get rich.” When they saw him enriching the
country before he enriched himself, the good souls said, “He is an
ambitious man.” This seemed all the more probable since the man was
religious, and even practised his religion to a certain degree, a thing
which was very favorably viewed at that epoch. He went regularly to low
mass every Sunday. The local deputy, who nosed out all rivalry
everywhere, soon began to grow uneasy over this religion. This deputy
had been a member of the legislative body of the Empire, and shared the
religious ideas of a father of the Oratoire, known under the name of
Fouché, Duc d’Otrante, whose creature and friend he had been. He
indulged in gentle raillery at God with closed doors. But when he
beheld the wealthy manufacturer Madeleine going to low mass at seven
o’clock, he perceived in him a possible candidate, and resolved to
outdo him; he took a Jesuit confessor, and went to high mass and to
vespers. Ambition was at that time, in the direct acceptation of the
word, a race to the steeple. The poor profited by this terror as well
as the good God, for the honorable deputy also founded two beds in the
hospital, which made twelve.

Nevertheless, in 1819 a rumor one morning circulated through the town
to the effect that, on the representations of the prefect and in
consideration of the services rendered by him to the country, Father
Madeleine was to be appointed by the King, mayor of M. sur M. Those who
had pronounced this newcomer to be “an ambitious fellow,” seized with
delight on this opportunity which all men desire, to exclaim, “There!
what did we say!” All M. sur M. was in an uproar. The rumor was well
founded. Several days later the appointment appeared in the _Moniteur_.
On the following day Father Madeleine refused.

In this same year of 1819 the products of the new process invented by
Madeleine figured in the industrial exhibition; when the jury made
their report, the King appointed the inventor a chevalier of the Legion
of Honor. A fresh excitement in the little town. Well, so it was the
cross that he wanted! Father Madeleine refused the cross.

Decidedly this man was an enigma. The good souls got out of their
predicament by saying, “After all, he is some sort of an adventurer.”


We have seen that the country owed much to him; the poor owed him
everything; he was so useful and he was so gentle that people had been
obliged to honor and respect him. His workmen, in particular, adored
him, and he endured this adoration with a sort of melancholy gravity.
When he was known to be rich, “people in society” bowed to him, and he
received invitations in the town; he was called, in town, Monsieur
Madeleine; his workmen and the children continued to call him Father
Madeleine, and that was what was most adapted to make him smile. In
proportion as he mounted, throve, invitations rained down upon him.
“Society” claimed him for its own. The prim little drawing-rooms on M.
sur M., which, of course, had at first been closed to the artisan,
opened both leaves of their folding-doors to the millionnaire. They
made a thousand advances to him. He refused.

This time the good gossips had no trouble. “He is an ignorant man, of
no education. No one knows where he came from. He would not know how to
behave in society. It has not been absolutely proved that he knows how
to read.”


When they saw him making money, they said, “He is a man of business.”
When they saw him scattering his money about, they said, “He is an
ambitious man.” When he was seen to decline honors, they said, “He is
an adventurer.” When they saw him repulse society, they said, “He is a
brute.”


In 1820, five years after his arrival in M. sur M., the services which
he had rendered to the district were so dazzling, the opinion of the
whole country round about was so unanimous, that the King again
appointed him mayor of the town. He again declined; but the prefect
resisted his refusal, all the notabilities of the place came to implore
him, the people in the street besought him; the urging was so vigorous
that he ended by accepting. It was noticed that the thing which seemed
chiefly to bring him to a decision was the almost irritated apostrophe
addressed to him by an old woman of the people, who called to him from
her threshold, in an angry way: _“A good mayor is a useful thing. Is he
drawing back before the good which he can do?”_

This was the third phase of his ascent. Father Madeleine had become
Monsieur Madeleine. Monsieur Madeleine became Monsieur le Maire.






On the other hand, he remained as simple as on the first day. He had
gray hair, a serious eye, the sunburned complexion of a laborer, the
thoughtful visage of a philosopher. He habitually wore a hat with a
wide brim, and a long coat of coarse cloth, buttoned to the chin. He
fulfilled his duties as mayor; but, with that exception, he lived in
solitude. He spoke to but few people. He avoided polite attentions; he
escaped quickly; he smiled to relieve himself of the necessity of
talking; he gave, in order to get rid of the necessity for smiling. The
women said of him, “What a good-natured bear!” His pleasure consisted
in strolling in the fields.

He always took his meals alone, with an open book before him, which he
read. He had a well-selected little library. He loved books; books are
cold but safe friends. In proportion as leisure came to him with
fortune, he seemed to take advantage of it to cultivate his mind. It
had been observed that, ever since his arrival at M. sur M., his
language had grown more polished, more choice, and more gentle with
every passing year. He liked to carry a gun with him on his strolls,
but he rarely made use of it. When he did happen to do so, his shooting
was something so infallible as to inspire terror. He never killed an
inoffensive animal. He never shot at a little bird.

Although he was no longer young, it was thought that he was still
prodigiously strong. He offered his assistance to any one who was in
need of it, lifted a horse, released a wheel clogged in the mud, or
stopped a runaway bull by the horns. He always had his pockets full of
money when he went out; but they were empty on his return. When he
passed through a village, the ragged brats ran joyously after him, and
surrounded him like a swarm of gnats.

It was thought that he must, in the past, have lived a country life,
since he knew all sorts of useful secrets, which he taught to the
peasants. He taught them how to destroy scurf on wheat, by sprinkling
it and the granary and inundating the cracks in the floor with a
solution of common salt; and how to chase away weevils by hanging up
orviot in bloom everywhere, on the walls and the ceilings, among the
grass and in the houses.

He had “recipes” for exterminating from a field, blight, tares,
foxtail, and all parasitic growths which destroy the wheat. He defended
a rabbit warren against rats, simply by the odor of a guinea-pig which
he placed in it.

One day he saw some country people busily engaged in pulling up
nettles; he examined the plants, which were uprooted and already dried,
and said: “They are dead. Nevertheless, it would be a good thing to
know how to make use of them. When the nettle is young, the leaf makes
an excellent vegetable; when it is older, it has filaments and fibres
like hemp and flax. Nettle cloth is as good as linen cloth. Chopped up,
nettles are good for poultry; pounded, they are good for horned cattle.
The seed of the nettle, mixed with fodder, gives gloss to the hair of
animals; the root, mixed with salt, produces a beautiful yellow
coloring-matter. Moreover, it is an excellent hay, which can be cut
twice. And what is required for the nettle? A little soil, no care, no
culture. Only the seed falls as it is ripe, and it is difficult to
collect it. That is all. With the exercise of a little care, the nettle
could be made useful; it is neglected and it becomes hurtful. It is
exterminated. How many men resemble the nettle!” He added, after a
pause: “Remember this, my friends: there are no such things as bad
plants or bad men. There are only bad cultivators.”


The children loved him because he knew how to make charming little
trifles of straw and cocoanuts.

When he saw the door of a church hung in black, he entered: he sought
out funerals as other men seek christenings. Widowhood and the grief of
others attracted him, because of his great gentleness; he mingled with
the friends clad in mourning, with families dressed in black, with the
priests groaning around a coffin. He seemed to like to give to his
thoughts for text these funereal psalmodies filled with the vision of
the other world. With his eyes fixed on heaven, he listened with a sort
of aspiration towards all the mysteries of the infinite, those sad
voices which sing on the verge of the obscure abyss of death.

He performed a multitude of good actions, concealing his agency in them
as a man conceals himself because of evil actions. He penetrated houses
privately, at night; he ascended staircases furtively. A poor wretch on
returning to his attic would find that his door had been opened,
sometimes even forced, during his absence. The poor man made a clamor
over it: some malefactor had been there! He entered, and the first
thing he beheld was a piece of gold lying forgotten on some piece of
furniture. The “malefactor” who had been there was Father Madeleine.

He was affable and sad. The people said: “There is a rich man who has
not a haughty air. There is a happy man who has not a contented air.”


Some people maintained that he was a mysterious person, and that no one
ever entered his chamber, which was a regular anchorite’s cell,
furnished with winged hour-glasses and enlivened by cross-bones and
skulls of dead men! This was much talked of, so that one of the elegant
and malicious young women of M. sur M. came to him one day, and asked:
“Monsieur le Maire, pray show us your chamber. It is said to be a
grotto.” He smiled, and introduced them instantly into this “grotto.”
They were well punished for their curiosity. The room was very simply
furnished in mahogany, which was rather ugly, like all furniture of
that sort, and hung with paper worth twelve sous. They could see
nothing remarkable about it, except two candlesticks of antique pattern
which stood on the chimney-piece and appeared to be silver, “for they
were hall-marked,” an observation full of the type of wit of petty
towns.

Nevertheless, people continued to say that no one ever got into the
room, and that it was a hermit’s cave, a mysterious retreat, a hole, a
tomb.

It was also whispered about that he had “immense” sums deposited with
Laffitte, with this peculiar feature, that they were always at his
immediate disposal, so that, it was added, M. Madeleine could make his
appearance at Laffitte’s any morning, sign a receipt, and carry off his
two or three millions in ten minutes. In reality, “these two or three
millions” were reducible, as we have said, to six hundred and thirty or
forty thousand francs.






At the beginning of 1820 the newspapers announced the death of M.
Myriel, Bishop of D——, surnamed “Monseigneur Bienvenu,” who had died in
the odor of sanctity at the age of eighty-two.

The Bishop of D—— to supply here a detail which the papers omitted—had
been blind for many years before his death, and content to be blind, as
his sister was beside him.

Let us remark by the way, that to be blind and to be loved, is, in
fact, one of the most strangely exquisite forms of happiness upon this
earth, where nothing is complete. To have continually at one’s side a
woman, a daughter, a sister, a charming being, who is there because you
need her and because she cannot do without you; to know that we are
indispensable to a person who is necessary to us; to be able to
incessantly measure one’s affection by the amount of her presence which
she bestows on us, and to say to ourselves, “Since she consecrates the
whole of her time to me, it is because I possess the whole of her
heart”; to behold her thought in lieu of her face; to be able to verify
the fidelity of one being amid the eclipse of the world; to regard the
rustle of a gown as the sound of wings; to hear her come and go,
retire, speak, return, sing, and to think that one is the centre of
these steps, of this speech; to manifest at each instant one’s personal
attraction; to feel one’s self all the more powerful because of one’s
infirmity; to become in one’s obscurity, and through one’s obscurity,
the star around which this angel gravitates,—few felicities equal this.
The supreme happiness of life consists in the conviction that one is
loved; loved for one’s own sake—let us say rather, loved in spite of
one’s self; this conviction the blind man possesses. To be served in
distress is to be caressed. Does he lack anything? No. One does not
lose the sight when one has love. And what love! A love wholly
constituted of virtue! There is no blindness where there is certainty.
Soul seeks soul, gropingly, and finds it. And this soul, found and
tested, is a woman. A hand sustains you; it is hers: a mouth lightly
touches your brow; it is her mouth: you hear a breath very near you; it
is hers. To have everything of her, from her worship to her pity, never
to be left, to have that sweet weakness aiding you, to lean upon that
immovable reed, to touch Providence with one’s hands, and to be able to
take it in one’s arms,—God made tangible,—what bliss! The heart, that
obscure, celestial flower, undergoes a mysterious blossoming. One would
not exchange that shadow for all brightness! The angel soul is there,
uninterruptedly there; if she departs, it is but to return again; she
vanishes like a dream, and reappears like reality. One feels warmth
approaching, and behold! she is there. One overflows with serenity,
with gayety, with ecstasy; one is a radiance amid the night. And there
are a thousand little cares. Nothings, which are enormous in that void.
The most ineffable accents of the feminine voice employed to lull you,
and supplying the vanished universe to you. One is caressed with the
soul. One sees nothing, but one feels that one is adored. It is a
paradise of shadows.

It was from this paradise that Monseigneur Welcome had passed to the
other.

The announcement of his death was reprinted by the local journal of M.
sur M. On the following day, M. Madeleine appeared clad wholly in
black, and with crape on his hat.

This mourning was noticed in the town, and commented on. It seemed to
throw a light on M. Madeleine’s origin. It was concluded that some
relationship existed between him and the venerable Bishop. _“He has
gone into mourning for the Bishop of D——”_ said the drawing-rooms; this
raised M. Madeleine’s credit greatly, and procured for him, instantly
and at one blow, a certain consideration in the noble world of M. sur
M. The microscopic Faubourg Saint-Germain of the place meditated
raising the quarantine against M. Madeleine, the probable relative of a
bishop. M. Madeleine perceived the advancement which he had obtained,
by the more numerous courtesies of the old women and the more plentiful
smiles of the young ones. One evening, a ruler in that petty great
world, who was curious by right of seniority, ventured to ask him, “M.
le Maire is doubtless a cousin of the late Bishop of D——?”


He said, “No, Madame.”


“But,” resumed the dowager, “you are wearing mourning for him.”


He replied, “It is because I was a servant in his family in my youth.”


Another thing which was remarked, was, that every time that he
encountered in the town a young Savoyard who was roaming about the
country and seeking chimneys to sweep, the mayor had him summoned,
inquired his name, and gave him money. The little Savoyards told each
other about it: a great many of them passed that way.






Little by little, and in the course of time, all this opposition
subsided. There had at first been exercised against M. Madeleine, in
virtue of a sort of law which all those who rise must submit to,
blackening and calumnies; then they grew to be nothing more than
ill-nature, then merely malicious remarks, then even this entirely
disappeared; respect became complete, unanimous, cordial, and towards
1821 the moment arrived when the word “Monsieur le Maire” was
pronounced at M. sur M. with almost the same accent as “Monseigneur the
Bishop” had been pronounced in D—— in 1815. People came from a distance
of ten leagues around to consult M. Madeleine. He put an end to
differences, he prevented lawsuits, he reconciled enemies. Every one
took him for the judge, and with good reason. It seemed as though he
had for a soul the book of the natural law. It was like an epidemic of
veneration, which in the course of six or seven years gradually took
possession of the whole district.

One single man in the town, in the arrondissement, absolutely escaped
this contagion, and, whatever Father Madeleine did, remained his
opponent as though a sort of incorruptible and imperturbable instinct
kept him on the alert and uneasy. It seems, in fact, as though there
existed in certain men a veritable bestial instinct, though pure and
upright, like all instincts, which creates antipathies and sympathies,
which fatally separates one nature from another nature, which does not
hesitate, which feels no disquiet, which does not hold its peace, and
which never belies itself, clear in its obscurity, infallible,
imperious, intractable, stubborn to all counsels of the intelligence
and to all the dissolvents of reason, and which, in whatever manner
destinies are arranged, secretly warns the man-dog of the presence of
the man-cat, and the man-fox of the presence of the man-lion.

It frequently happened that when M. Madeleine was passing along a
street, calm, affectionate, surrounded by the blessings of all, a man
of lofty stature, clad in an iron-gray frock-coat, armed with a heavy
cane, and wearing a battered hat, turned round abruptly behind him, and
followed him with his eyes until he disappeared, with folded arms and a
slow shake of the head, and his upper lip raised in company with his
lower to his nose, a sort of significant grimace which might be
translated by: “What is that man, after all? I certainly have seen him
somewhere. In any case, I am not his dupe.”


This person, grave with a gravity which was almost menacing, was one of
those men who, even when only seen by a rapid glimpse, arrest the
spectator’s attention.

His name was Javert, and he belonged to the police.

At M. sur M. he exercised the unpleasant but useful functions of an
inspector. He had not seen Madeleine’s beginnings. Javert owed the post
which he occupied to the protection of M. Chabouillet, the secretary of
the Minister of State, Comte Anglès, then prefect of police at Paris.
When Javert arrived at M. sur M. the fortune of the great manufacturer
was already made, and Father Madeleine had become Monsieur Madeleine.

Certain police officers have a peculiar physiognomy, which is
complicated with an air of baseness mingled with an air of authority.
Javert possessed this physiognomy minus the baseness.

It is our conviction that if souls were visible to the eyes, we should
be able to see distinctly that strange thing that each one individual
of the human race corresponds to some one of the species of the animal
creation; and we could easily recognize this truth, hardly perceived by
the thinker, that from the oyster to the eagle, from the pig to the
tiger, all animals exist in man, and that each one of them is in a man.
Sometimes even several of them at a time.

Animals are nothing else than the figures of our virtues and our vices,
straying before our eyes, the visible phantoms of our souls. God shows
them to us in order to induce us to reflect. Only since animals are
mere shadows, God has not made them capable of education in the full
sense of the word; what is the use? On the contrary, our souls being
realities and having a goal which is appropriate to them, God has
bestowed on them intelligence; that is to say, the possibility of
education. Social education, when well done, can always draw from a
soul, of whatever sort it may be, the utility which it contains.

This, be it said, is of course from the restricted point of view of the
terrestrial life which is apparent, and without prejudging the profound
question of the anterior or ulterior personality of the beings which
are not man. The visible _I_ in nowise authorizes the thinker to deny
the latent _I_. Having made this reservation, let us pass on.

Now, if the reader will admit, for a moment, with us, that in every man
there is one of the animal species of creation, it will be easy for us
to say what there was in Police Officer Javert.

The peasants of Asturias are convinced that in every litter of wolves
there is one dog, which is killed by the mother because, otherwise, as
he grew up, he would devour the other little ones.

Give to this dog-son of a wolf a human face, and the result will be
Javert.

Javert had been born in prison, of a fortune-teller, whose husband was
in the galleys. As he grew up, he thought that he was outside the pale
of society, and he despaired of ever re-entering it. He observed that
society unpardoningly excludes two classes of men,—those who attack it
and those who guard it; he had no choice except between these two
classes; at the same time, he was conscious of an indescribable
foundation of rigidity, regularity, and probity, complicated with an
inexpressible hatred for the race of bohemians whence he was sprung. He
entered the police; he succeeded there. At forty years of age he was an
inspector.

During his youth he had been employed in the convict establishments of
the South.

Before proceeding further, let us come to an understanding as to the
words, “human face,” which we have just applied to Javert.

The human face of Javert consisted of a flat nose, with two deep
nostrils, towards which enormous whiskers ascended on his cheeks. One
felt ill at ease when he saw these two forests and these two caverns
for the first time. When Javert laughed,—and his laugh was rare and
terrible,—his thin lips parted and revealed to view not only his teeth,
but his gums, and around his nose there formed a flattened and savage
fold, as on the muzzle of a wild beast. Javert, serious, was a
watchdog; when he laughed, he was a tiger. As for the rest, he had very
little skull and a great deal of jaw; his hair concealed his forehead
and fell over his eyebrows; between his eyes there was a permanent,
central frown, like an imprint of wrath; his gaze was obscure; his
mouth pursed up and terrible; his air that of ferocious command.

This man was composed of two very simple and two very good sentiments,
comparatively; but he rendered them almost bad, by dint of exaggerating
them,—respect for authority, hatred of rebellion; and in his eyes,
murder, robbery, all crimes, are only forms of rebellion. He enveloped
in a blind and profound faith every one who had a function in the
state, from the prime minister to the rural policeman. He covered with
scorn, aversion, and disgust every one who had once crossed the legal
threshold of evil. He was absolute, and admitted no exceptions. On the
one hand, he said, “The functionary can make no mistake; the magistrate
is never the wrong.” On the other hand, he said, “These men are
irremediably lost. Nothing good can come from them.” He fully shared
the opinion of those extreme minds which attribute to human law I know
not what power of making, or, if the reader will have it so, of
authenticating, demons, and who place a Styx at the base of society. He
was stoical, serious, austere; a melancholy dreamer, humble and
haughty, like fanatics. His glance was like a gimlet, cold and
piercing. His whole life hung on these two words: watchfulness and
supervision. He had introduced a straight line into what is the most
crooked thing in the world; he possessed the conscience of his
usefulness, the religion of his functions, and he was a spy as other
men are priests. Woe to the man who fell into his hands! He would have
arrested his own father, if the latter had escaped from the galleys,
and would have denounced his mother, if she had broken her ban. And he
would have done it with that sort of inward satisfaction which is
conferred by virtue. And, withal, a life of privation, isolation,
abnegation, chastity, with never a diversion. It was implacable duty;
the police understood, as the Spartans understood Sparta, a pitiless
lying in wait, a ferocious honesty, a marble informer, Brutus in
Vidocq.

Javert’s whole person was expressive of the man who spies and who
withdraws himself from observation. The mystical school of Joseph de
Maistre, which at that epoch seasoned with lofty cosmogony those things
which were called the ultra newspapers, would not have failed to
declare that Javert was a symbol. His brow was not visible; it
disappeared beneath his hat: his eyes were not visible, since they were
lost under his eyebrows: his chin was not visible, for it was plunged
in his cravat: his hands were not visible; they were drawn up in his
sleeves: and his cane was not visible; he carried it under his coat.
But when the occasion presented itself, there was suddenly seen to
emerge from all this shadow, as from an ambuscade, a narrow and angular
forehead, a baleful glance, a threatening chin, enormous hands, and a
monstrous cudgel.

In his leisure moments, which were far from frequent, he read, although
he hated books; this caused him to be not wholly illiterate. This could
be recognized by some emphasis in his speech.

As we have said, he had no vices. When he was pleased with himself, he
permitted himself a pinch of snuff. Therein lay his connection with
humanity.

The reader will have no difficulty in understanding that Javert was the
terror of that whole class which the annual statistics of the Ministry
of Justice designates under the rubric, Vagrants. The name of Javert
routed them by its mere utterance; the face of Javert petrified them at
sight.

Such was this formidable man.

Javert was like an eye constantly fixed on M. Madeleine. An eye full of
suspicion and conjecture. M. Madeleine had finally perceived the fact;
but it seemed to be of no importance to him. He did not even put a
question to Javert; he neither sought nor avoided him; he bore that
embarrassing and almost oppressive gaze without appearing to notice it.
He treated Javert with ease and courtesy, as he did all the rest of the
world.

It was divined, from some words which escaped Javert, that he had
secretly investigated, with that curiosity which belongs to the race,
and into which there enters as much instinct as will, all the anterior
traces which Father Madeleine might have left elsewhere. He seemed to
know, and he sometimes said in covert words, that some one had gleaned
certain information in a certain district about a family which had
disappeared. Once he chanced to say, as he was talking to himself, “I
think I have him!” Then he remained pensive for three days, and uttered
not a word. It seemed that the thread which he thought he held had
broken.

Moreover, and this furnishes the necessary corrective for the too
absolute sense which certain words might present, there can be nothing
really infallible in a human creature, and the peculiarity of instinct
is that it can become confused, thrown off the track, and defeated.
Otherwise, it would be superior to intelligence, and the beast would be
found to be provided with a better light than man.

Javert was evidently somewhat disconcerted by the perfect naturalness
and tranquillity of M. Madeleine.

One day, nevertheless, his strange manner appeared to produce an
impression on M. Madeleine. It was on the following occasion.






One morning M. Madeleine was passing through an unpaved alley of M. sur
M.; he heard a noise, and saw a group some distance away. He
approached. An old man named Father Fauchelevent had just fallen
beneath his cart, his horse having tumbled down.

This Fauchelevent was one of the few enemies whom M. Madeleine had at
that time. When Madeleine arrived in the neighborhood, Fauchelevent, an
ex-notary and a peasant who was almost educated, had a business which
was beginning to be in a bad way. Fauchelevent had seen this simple
workman grow rich, while he, a lawyer, was being ruined. This had
filled him with jealousy, and he had done all he could, on every
occasion, to injure Madeleine. Then bankruptcy had come; and as the old
man had nothing left but a cart and a horse, and neither family nor
children, he had turned carter.

The horse had two broken legs and could not rise. The old man was
caught in the wheels. The fall had been so unlucky that the whole
weight of the vehicle rested on his breast. The cart was quite heavily
laden. Father Fauchelevent was rattling in the throat in the most
lamentable manner. They had tried, but in vain, to drag him out. An
unmethodical effort, aid awkwardly given, a wrong shake, might kill
him. It was impossible to disengage him otherwise than by lifting the
vehicle off of him. Javert, who had come up at the moment of the
accident, had sent for a jack-screw.

M. Madeleine arrived. People stood aside respectfully.

“Help!” cried old Fauchelevent. “Who will be good and save the old
man?”


M. Madeleine turned towards those present:—

“Is there a jack-screw to be had?”


“One has been sent for,” answered the peasant.

“How long will it take to get it?”


“They have gone for the nearest, to Flachot’s place, where there is a
farrier; but it makes no difference; it will take a good quarter of an
hour.”


“A quarter of an hour!” exclaimed Madeleine.

It had rained on the preceding night; the soil was soaked.

The cart was sinking deeper into the earth every moment, and crushing
the old carter’s breast more and more. It was evident that his ribs
would be broken in five minutes more.

“It is impossible to wait another quarter of an hour,” said Madeleine
to the peasants, who were staring at him.

“We must!”


“But it will be too late then! Don’t you see that the cart is sinking?”


“Well!”


“Listen,” resumed Madeleine; “there is still room enough under the cart
to allow a man to crawl beneath it and raise it with his back. Only
half a minute, and the poor man can be taken out. Is there any one here
who has stout loins and heart? There are five louis d’or to be earned!”


Not a man in the group stirred.

“Ten louis,” said Madeleine.

The persons present dropped their eyes. One of them muttered: “A man
would need to be devilish strong. And then he runs the risk of getting
crushed!”


“Come,” began Madeleine again, “twenty louis.”


The same silence.

“It is not the will which is lacking,” said a voice.

M. Madeleine turned round, and recognized Javert. He had not noticed
him on his arrival.

Javert went on:—

“It is strength. One would have to be a terrible man to do such a thing
as lift a cart like that on his back.”


Then, gazing fixedly at M. Madeleine, he went on, emphasizing every
word that he uttered:—

“Monsieur Madeleine, I have never known but one man capable of doing
what you ask.”


Madeleine shuddered.

Javert added, with an air of indifference, but without removing his
eyes from Madeleine:—

“He was a convict.”


“Ah!” said Madeleine.

“In the galleys at Toulon.”


Madeleine turned pale.

Meanwhile, the cart continued to sink slowly. Father Fauchelevent
rattled in the throat, and shrieked:—

“I am strangling! My ribs are breaking! a screw! something! Ah!”


Madeleine glanced about him.

“Is there, then, no one who wishes to earn twenty louis and save the
life of this poor old man?”


No one stirred. Javert resumed:—

“I have never known but one man who could take the place of a screw,
and he was that convict.”


“Ah! It is crushing me!” cried the old man.

Madeleine raised his head, met Javert’s falcon eye still fixed upon
him, looked at the motionless peasants, and smiled sadly. Then, without
saying a word, he fell on his knees, and before the crowd had even had
time to utter a cry, he was underneath the vehicle.

A terrible moment of expectation and silence ensued.

They beheld Madeleine, almost flat on his stomach beneath that terrible
weight, make two vain efforts to bring his knees and his elbows
together. They shouted to him, “Father Madeleine, come out!” Old
Fauchelevent himself said to him, “Monsieur Madeleine, go away! You see
that I am fated to die! Leave me! You will get yourself crushed also!”
Madeleine made no reply.

All the spectators were panting. The wheels had continued to sink, and
it had become almost impossible for Madeleine to make his way from
under the vehicle.

Suddenly the enormous mass was seen to quiver, the cart rose slowly,
the wheels half emerged from the ruts. They heard a stifled voice
crying, “Make haste! Help!” It was Madeleine, who had just made a final
effort.

They rushed forwards. The devotion of a single man had given force and
courage to all. The cart was raised by twenty arms. Old Fauchelevent
was saved.

Madeleine rose. He was pale, though dripping with perspiration. His
clothes were torn and covered with mud. All wept. The old man kissed
his knees and called him the good God. As for him, he bore upon his
countenance an indescribable expression of happy and celestial
suffering, and he fixed his tranquil eye on Javert, who was still
staring at him.






Fauchelevent had dislocated his kneepan in his fall. Father Madeleine
had him conveyed to an infirmary which he had established for his
workmen in the factory building itself, and which was served by two
sisters of charity. On the following morning the old man found a
thousand-franc bank-note on his night-stand, with these words in Father
Madeleine’s writing: _“I purchase your horse and cart.”_ The cart was
broken, and the horse was dead. Fauchelevent recovered, but his knee
remained stiff. M. Madeleine, on the recommendation of the sisters of
charity and of his priest, got the good man a place as gardener in a
female convent in the Rue Saint-Antoine in Paris.

Some time afterwards, M. Madeleine was appointed mayor. The first time
that Javert beheld M. Madeleine clothed in the scarf which gave him
authority over the town, he felt the sort of shudder which a watch-dog
might experience on smelling a wolf in his master’s clothes. From that
time forth he avoided him as much as he possibly could. When the
requirements of the service imperatively demanded it, and he could not
do otherwise than meet the mayor, he addressed him with profound
respect.

This prosperity created at M. sur M. by Father Madeleine had, besides
the visible signs which we have mentioned, another symptom which was
nonetheless significant for not being visible. This never deceives.
When the population suffers, when work is lacking, when there is no
commerce, the tax-payer resists imposts through penury, he exhausts and
oversteps his respite, and the state expends a great deal of money in
the charges for compelling and collection. When work is abundant, when
the country is rich and happy, the taxes are paid easily and cost the
state nothing. It may be said, that there is one infallible thermometer
of the public misery and riches,—the cost of collecting the taxes. In
the course of seven years the expense of collecting the taxes had
diminished three-fourths in the arrondissement of M. sur M., and this
led to this arrondissement being frequently cited from all the rest by
M. de Villèle, then Minister of Finance.

Such was the condition of the country when Fantine returned thither. No
one remembered her. Fortunately, the door of M. Madeleine’s factory was
like the face of a friend. She presented herself there, and was
admitted to the women’s workroom. The trade was entirely new to
Fantine; she could not be very skilful at it, and she therefore earned
but little by her day’s work; but it was sufficient; the problem was
solved; she was earning her living.






When Fantine saw that she was making her living, she felt joyful for a
moment. To live honestly by her own labor, what mercy from heaven! The
taste for work had really returned to her. She bought a looking-glass,
took pleasure in surveying in it her youth, her beautiful hair, her
fine teeth; she forgot many things; she thought only of Cosette and of
the possible future, and was almost happy. She hired a little room and
furnished on credit on the strength of her future work—a lingering
trace of her improvident ways. As she was not able to say that she was
married she took good care, as we have seen, not to mention her little
girl.

At first, as the reader has seen, she paid the Thénardiers promptly. As
she only knew how to sign her name, she was obliged to write through a
public letter-writer.

She wrote often, and this was noticed. It began to be said in an
undertone, in the women’s workroom, that Fantine “wrote letters” and
that “she had ways about her.”


There is no one for spying on people’s actions like those who are not
concerned in them. Why does that gentleman never come except at
nightfall? Why does Mr. So-and-So never hang his key on its nail on
Tuesday? Why does he always take the narrow streets? Why does Madame
always descend from her hackney-coach before reaching her house? Why
does she send out to purchase six sheets of note paper, when she has a
“whole stationer’s shop full of it?” etc. There exist beings who, for
the sake of obtaining the key to these enigmas, which are, moreover, of
no consequence whatever to them, spend more money, waste more time,
take more trouble, than would be required for ten good actions, and
that gratuitously, for their own pleasure, without receiving any other
payment for their curiosity than curiosity. They will follow up such
and such a man or woman for whole days; they will do sentry duty for
hours at a time on the corners of the streets, under alley-way doors at
night, in cold and rain; they will bribe errand-porters, they will make
the drivers of hackney-coaches and lackeys tipsy, buy a waiting-maid,
suborn a porter. Why? For no reason. A pure passion for seeing,
knowing, and penetrating into things. A pure itch for talking. And
often these secrets once known, these mysteries made public, these
enigmas illuminated by the light of day, bring on catastrophies, duels,
failures, the ruin of families, and broken lives, to the great joy of
those who have “found out everything,” without any interest in the
matter, and by pure instinct. A sad thing.

Certain persons are malicious solely through a necessity for talking.
Their conversation, the chat of the drawing-room, gossip of the
anteroom, is like those chimneys which consume wood rapidly; they need
a great amount of combustibles; and their combustibles are furnished by
their neighbors.

So Fantine was watched.

In addition, many a one was jealous of her golden hair and of her white
teeth.

It was remarked that in the workroom she often turned aside, in the
midst of the rest, to wipe away a tear. These were the moments when she
was thinking of her child; perhaps, also, of the man whom she had
loved.

Breaking the gloomy bonds of the past is a mournful task.

It was observed that she wrote twice a month at least, and that she
paid the carriage on the letter. They managed to obtain the address:
_Monsieur, Monsieur Thénardier, inn-keeper at Montfermeil_. The public
writer, a good old man who could not fill his stomach with red wine
without emptying his pocket of secrets, was made to talk in the
wine-shop. In short, it was discovered that Fantine had a child. “She
must be a pretty sort of a woman.” An old gossip was found, who made
the trip to Montfermeil, talked to the Thénardiers, and said on her
return: “For my five and thirty francs I have freed my mind. I have
seen the child.”


The gossip who did this thing was a gorgon named Madame Victurnien, the
guardian and door-keeper of every one’s virtue. Madame Victurnien was
fifty-six, and re-enforced the mask of ugliness with the mask of age. A
quavering voice, a whimsical mind. This old dame had once been
young—astonishing fact! In her youth, in ’93, she had married a monk
who had fled from his cloister in a red cap, and passed from the
Bernardines to the Jacobins. She was dry, rough, peevish, sharp,
captious, almost venomous; all this in memory of her monk, whose widow
she was, and who had ruled over her masterfully and bent her to his
will. She was a nettle in which the rustle of the cassock was visible.
At the Restoration she had turned bigot, and that with so much energy
that the priests had forgiven her her monk. She had a small property,
which she bequeathed with much ostentation to a religious community.
She was in high favor at the episcopal palace of Arras. So this Madame
Victurnien went to Montfermeil, and returned with the remark, “I have
seen the child.”


All this took time. Fantine had been at the factory for more than a
year, when, one morning, the superintendent of the workroom handed her
fifty francs from the mayor, told her that she was no longer employed
in the shop, and requested her, in the mayor’s name, to leave the
neighborhood.

This was the very month when the Thénardiers, after having demanded
twelve francs instead of six, had just exacted fifteen francs instead
of twelve.

Fantine was overwhelmed. She could not leave the neighborhood; she was
in debt for her rent and furniture. Fifty francs was not sufficient to
cancel this debt. She stammered a few supplicating words. The
superintendent ordered her to leave the shop on the instant. Besides,
Fantine was only a moderately good workwoman. Overcome with shame, even
more than with despair, she quitted the shop, and returned to her room.
So her fault was now known to every one.

She no longer felt strong enough to say a word. She was advised to see
the mayor; she did not dare. The mayor had given her fifty francs
because he was good, and had dismissed her because he was just. She
bowed before the decision.






So the monk’s widow was good for something.

But M. Madeleine had heard nothing of all this. Life is full of just
such combinations of events. M. Madeleine was in the habit of almost
never entering the women’s workroom.

At the head of this room he had placed an elderly spinster, whom the
priest had provided for him, and he had full confidence in this
superintendent,—a truly respectable person, firm, equitable, upright,
full of the charity which consists in giving, but not having in the
same degree that charity which consists in understanding and in
forgiving. M. Madeleine relied wholly on her. The best men are often
obliged to delegate their authority. It was with this full power, and
the conviction that she was doing right, that the superintendent had
instituted the suit, judged, condemned, and executed Fantine.

As regards the fifty francs, she had given them from a fund which M.
Madeleine had intrusted to her for charitable purposes, and for giving
assistance to the workwomen, and of which she rendered no account.

Fantine tried to obtain a situation as a servant in the neighborhood;
she went from house to house. No one would have her. She could not
leave town. The second-hand dealer, to whom she was in debt for her
furniture—and what furniture!—said to her, “If you leave, I will have
you arrested as a thief.” The householder, whom she owed for her rent,
said to her, “You are young and pretty; you can pay.” She divided the
fifty francs between the landlord and the furniture-dealer, returned to
the latter three-quarters of his goods, kept only necessaries, and
found herself without work, without a trade, with nothing but her bed,
and still about fifty francs in debt.

She began to make coarse shirts for soldiers of the garrison, and
earned twelve sous a day. Her daughter cost her ten. It was at this
point that she began to pay the Thénardiers irregularly.

However, the old woman who lighted her candle for her when she returned
at night, taught her the art of living in misery. Back of living on
little, there is the living on nothing. These are the two chambers; the
first is dark, the second is black.

Fantine learned how to live without fire entirely in the winter; how to
give up a bird which eats a half a farthing’s worth of millet every two
days; how to make a coverlet of one’s petticoat, and a petticoat of
one’s coverlet; how to save one’s candle, by taking one’s meals by the
light of the opposite window. No one knows all that certain feeble
creatures, who have grown old in privation and honesty, can get out of
a sou. It ends by being a talent. Fantine acquired this sublime talent,
and regained a little courage.

At this epoch she said to a neighbor, “Bah! I say to myself, by only
sleeping five hours, and working all the rest of the time at my sewing,
I shall always manage to nearly earn my bread. And, then, when one is
sad, one eats less. Well, sufferings, uneasiness, a little bread on one
hand, trouble on the other,—all this will support me.”


It would have been a great happiness to have her little girl with her
in this distress. She thought of having her come. But what then! Make
her share her own destitution! And then, she was in debt to the
Thénardiers! How could she pay them? And the journey! How pay for that?

The old woman who had given her lessons in what may be called the life
of indigence, was a sainted spinster named Marguerite, who was pious
with a true piety, poor and charitable towards the poor, and even
towards the rich, knowing how to write just sufficiently to sign
herself Marguerite, and believing in God, which is science.

There are many such virtuous people in this lower world; some day they
will be in the world above. This life has a morrow.

At first, Fantine had been so ashamed that she had not dared to go out.

When she was in the street, she divined that people turned round behind
her, and pointed at her; every one stared at her and no one greeted
her; the cold and bitter scorn of the passers-by penetrated her very
flesh and soul like a north wind.

It seems as though an unfortunate woman were utterly bare beneath the
sarcasm and the curiosity of all in small towns. In Paris, at least, no
one knows you, and this obscurity is a garment. Oh! how she would have
liked to betake herself to Paris! Impossible!

She was obliged to accustom herself to disrepute, as she had accustomed
herself to indigence. Gradually she decided on her course. At the
expiration of two or three months she shook off her shame, and began to
go about as though there were nothing the matter. “It is all the same
to me,” she said.

She went and came, bearing her head well up, with a bitter smile, and
was conscious that she was becoming brazen-faced.

Madame Victurnien sometimes saw her passing, from her window, noticed
the distress of “that creature” who, “thanks to her,” had been “put
back in her proper place,” and congratulated herself. The happiness of
the evil-minded is black.

Excess of toil wore out Fantine, and the little dry cough which
troubled her increased. She sometimes said to her neighbor, Marguerite,
“Just feel how hot my hands are!”


Nevertheless, when she combed her beautiful hair in the morning with an
old broken comb, and it flowed about her like floss silk, she
experienced a moment of happy coquetry.






She had been dismissed towards the end of the winter; the summer
passed, but winter came again. Short days, less work. Winter: no
warmth, no light, no noonday, the evening joining on to the morning,
fogs, twilight; the window is gray; it is impossible to see clearly at
it. The sky is but a vent-hole. The whole day is a cavern. The sun has
the air of a beggar. A frightful season! Winter changes the water of
heaven and the heart of man into a stone. Her creditors harrassed her.

Fantine earned too little. Her debts had increased. The Thénardiers,
who were not promptly paid, wrote to her constantly letters whose
contents drove her to despair, and whose carriage ruined her. One day
they wrote to her that her little Cosette was entirely naked in that
cold weather, that she needed a woollen skirt, and that her mother must
send at least ten francs for this. She received the letter, and crushed
it in her hands all day long. That evening she went into a barber’s
shop at the corner of the street, and pulled out her comb. Her
admirable golden hair fell to her knees.

“What splendid hair!” exclaimed the barber.

“How much will you give me for it?” said she.

“Ten francs.”


“Cut it off.”


She purchased a knitted petticoat and sent it to the Thénardiers. This
petticoat made the Thénardiers furious. It was the money that they
wanted. They gave the petticoat to Éponine. The poor Lark continued to
shiver.

Fantine thought: “My child is no longer cold. I have clothed her with
my hair.” She put on little round caps which concealed her shorn head,
and in which she was still pretty.

Dark thoughts held possession of Fantine’s heart.

When she saw that she could no longer dress her hair, she began to hate
every one about her. She had long shared the universal veneration for
Father Madeleine; yet, by dint of repeating to herself that it was he
who had discharged her, that he was the cause of her unhappiness, she
came to hate him also, and most of all. When she passed the factory in
working hours, when the workpeople were at the door, she affected to
laugh and sing.

An old workwoman who once saw her laughing and singing in this fashion
said, “There’s a girl who will come to a bad end.”


She took a lover, the first who offered, a man whom she did not love,
out of bravado and with rage in her heart. He was a miserable scamp, a
sort of mendicant musician, a lazy beggar, who beat her, and who
abandoned her as she had taken him, in disgust.

She adored her child.

The lower she descended, the darker everything grew about her, the more
radiant shone that little angel at the bottom of her heart. She said,
“When I get rich, I will have my Cosette with me;” and she laughed. Her
cough did not leave her, and she had sweats on her back.

One day she received from the Thénardiers a letter couched in the
following terms: “Cosette is ill with a malady which is going the
rounds of the neighborhood. A miliary fever, they call it. Expensive
drugs are required. This is ruining us, and we can no longer pay for
them. If you do not send us forty francs before the week is out, the
little one will be dead.”


She burst out laughing, and said to her old neighbor: “Ah! they are
good! Forty francs! the idea! That makes two napoleons! Where do they
think I am to get them? These peasants are stupid, truly.”


Nevertheless she went to a dormer window in the staircase and read the
letter once more. Then she descended the stairs and emerged, running
and leaping and still laughing.

Some one met her and said to her, “What makes you so gay?”


She replied: “A fine piece of stupidity that some country people have
written to me. They demand forty francs of me. So much for you, you
peasants!”


As she crossed the square, she saw a great many people collected around
a carriage of eccentric shape, upon the top of which stood a man
dressed in red, who was holding forth. He was a quack dentist on his
rounds, who was offering to the public full sets of teeth, opiates,
powders and elixirs.

Fantine mingled in the group, and began to laugh with the rest at the
harangue, which contained slang for the populace and jargon for
respectable people. The tooth-puller espied the lovely, laughing girl,
and suddenly exclaimed: “You have beautiful teeth, you girl there, who
are laughing; if you want to sell me your palettes, I will give you a
gold napoleon apiece for them.”


“What are my palettes?” asked Fantine.

“The palettes,” replied the dental professor, “are the front teeth, the
two upper ones.”


“How horrible!” exclaimed Fantine.

“Two napoleons!” grumbled a toothless old woman who was present.
“Here’s a lucky girl!”


Fantine fled and stopped her ears that she might not hear the hoarse
voice of the man shouting to her: “Reflect, my beauty! two napoleons;
they may prove of service. If your heart bids you, come this evening to
the inn of the _Tillac d’Argent_; you will find me there.”


Fantine returned home. She was furious, and related the occurrence to
her good neighbor Marguerite: “Can you understand such a thing? Is he
not an abominable man? How can they allow such people to go about the
country! Pull out my two front teeth! Why, I should be horrible! My
hair will grow again, but my teeth! Ah! what a monster of a man! I
should prefer to throw myself head first on the pavement from the fifth
story! He told me that he should be at the _Tillac d’Argent_ this
evening.”


“And what did he offer?” asked Marguerite.

“Two napoleons.”


“That makes forty francs.”


“Yes,” said Fantine; “that makes forty francs.”


She remained thoughtful, and began her work. At the expiration of a
quarter of an hour she left her sewing and went to read the
Thénardiers’ letter once more on the staircase.

On her return, she said to Marguerite, who was at work beside her:—

“What is a miliary fever? Do you know?”


“Yes,” answered the old spinster; “it is a disease.”


“Does it require many drugs?”


“Oh! terrible drugs.”


“How does one get it?”


“It is a malady that one gets without knowing how.”


“Then it attacks children?”


“Children in particular.”


“Do people die of it?”


“They may,” said Marguerite.

Fantine left the room and went to read her letter once more on the
staircase.

That evening she went out, and was seen to turn her steps in the
direction of the Rue de Paris, where the inns are situated.

The next morning, when Marguerite entered Fantine’s room before
daylight,—for they always worked together, and in this manner used only
one candle for the two,—she found Fantine seated on her bed, pale and
frozen. She had not lain down. Her cap had fallen on her knees. Her
candle had burned all night, and was almost entirely consumed.
Marguerite halted on the threshold, petrified at this tremendous
wastefulness, and exclaimed:—

“Lord! the candle is all burned out! Something has happened.”


Then she looked at Fantine, who turned toward her her head bereft of
its hair.

Fantine had grown ten years older since the preceding night.

“Jesus!” said Marguerite, “what is the matter with you, Fantine?”


“Nothing,” replied Fantine. “Quite the contrary. My child will not die
of that frightful malady, for lack of succor. I am content.”


So saying, she pointed out to the spinster two napoleons which were
glittering on the table.

“Ah! Jesus God!” cried Marguerite. “Why, it is a fortune! Where did you
get those louis d’or?”


“I got them,” replied Fantine.

At the same time she smiled. The candle illuminated her countenance. It
was a bloody smile. A reddish saliva soiled the corners of her lips,
and she had a black hole in her mouth.

The two teeth had been extracted.

She sent the forty francs to Montfermeil.

After all it was a ruse of the Thénardiers to obtain money. Cosette was
not ill.

Fantine threw her mirror out of the window. She had long since quitted
her cell on the second floor for an attic with only a latch to fasten
it, next the roof; one of those attics whose extremity forms an angle
with the floor, and knocks you on the head every instant. The poor
occupant can reach the end of his chamber as he can the end of his
destiny, only by bending over more and more.

She had no longer a bed; a rag which she called her coverlet, a
mattress on the floor, and a seatless chair still remained. A little
rosebush which she had, had dried up, forgotten, in one corner. In the
other corner was a butter-pot to hold water, which froze in winter, and
in which the various levels of the water remained long marked by these
circles of ice. She had lost her shame; she lost her coquetry. A final
sign. She went out, with dirty caps. Whether from lack of time or from
indifference, she no longer mended her linen. As the heels wore out,
she dragged her stockings down into her shoes. This was evident from
the perpendicular wrinkles. She patched her bodice, which was old and
worn out, with scraps of calico which tore at the slightest movement.
The people to whom she was indebted made “scenes” and gave her no
peace. She found them in the street, she found them again on her
staircase. She passed many a night weeping and thinking. Her eyes were
very bright, and she felt a steady pain in her shoulder towards the top
of the left shoulder-blade. She coughed a great deal. She deeply hated
Father Madeleine, but made no complaint. She sewed seventeen hours a
day; but a contractor for the work of prisons, who made the prisoners
work at a discount, suddenly made prices fall, which reduced the daily
earnings of working-women to nine sous. Seventeen hours of toil, and
nine sous a day! Her creditors were more pitiless than ever. The
second-hand dealer, who had taken back nearly all his furniture, said
to her incessantly, “When will you pay me, you hussy?” What did they
want of her, good God! She felt that she was being hunted, and
something of the wild beast developed in her. About the same time,
Thénardier wrote to her that he had waited with decidedly too much
amiability and that he must have a hundred francs at once; otherwise he
would turn little Cosette out of doors, convalescent as she was from
her heavy illness, into the cold and the streets, and that she might do
what she liked with herself, and die if she chose. “A hundred francs,”
thought Fantine. “But in what trade can one earn a hundred sous a day?”


“Come!” said she, “let us sell what is left.”


The unfortunate girl became a woman of the town.






What is this history of Fantine? It is society purchasing a slave.

From whom? From misery.

From hunger, cold, isolation, destitution. A dolorous bargain. A soul
for a morsel of bread. Misery offers; society accepts.

The sacred law of Jesus Christ governs our civilization, but it does
not, as yet, permeate it; it is said that slavery has disappeared from
European civilization. This is a mistake. It still exists; but it
weighs only upon the woman, and it is called prostitution.

It weighs upon the woman, that is to say, upon grace, weakness, beauty,
maternity. This is not one of the least of man’s disgraces.

At the point in this melancholy drama which we have now reached,
nothing is left to Fantine of that which she had formerly been.

She has become marble in becoming mire. Whoever touches her feels cold.
She passes; she endures you; she ignores you; she is the severe and
dishonored figure. Life and the social order have said their last word
for her. All has happened to her that will happen to her. She has felt
everything, borne everything, experienced everything, suffered
everything, lost everything, mourned everything. She is resigned, with
that resignation which resembles indifference, as death resembles
sleep. She no longer avoids anything. Let all the clouds fall upon her,
and all the ocean sweep over her! What matters it to her? She is a
sponge that is soaked.

At least, she believes it to be so; but it is an error to imagine that
fate can be exhausted, and that one has reached the bottom of anything
whatever.

Alas! What are all these fates, driven on pell-mell? Whither are they
going? Why are they thus?

He who knows that sees the whole of the shadow.

He is alone. His name is God.






There is in all small towns, and there was at M. sur M. in particular,
a class of young men who nibble away an income of fifteen hundred
francs with the same air with which their prototypes devour two hundred
thousand francs a year in Paris. These are beings of the great neuter
species: impotent men, parasites, cyphers, who have a little land, a
little folly, a little wit; who would be rustics in a drawing-room, and
who think themselves gentlemen in the dram-shop; who say, “My fields,
my peasants, my woods”; who hiss actresses at the theatre to prove that
they are persons of taste; quarrel with the officers of the garrison to
prove that they are men of war; hunt, smoke, yawn, drink, smell of
tobacco, play billiards, stare at travellers as they descend from the
diligence, live at the café, dine at the inn, have a dog which eats the
bones under the table, and a mistress who eats the dishes on the table;
who stick at a sou, exaggerate the fashions, admire tragedy, despise
women, wear out their old boots, copy London through Paris, and Paris
through the medium of Pont-à-Mousson, grow old as dullards, never work,
serve no use, and do no great harm.

M. Félix Tholomyès, had he remained in his own province and never
beheld Paris, would have been one of these men.

If they were richer, one would say, “They are dandies;” if they were
poorer, one would say, “They are idlers.” They are simply men without
employment. Among these unemployed there are bores, the bored,
dreamers, and some knaves.

At that period a dandy was composed of a tall collar, a big cravat, a
watch with trinkets, three vests of different colors, worn one on top
of the other—the red and blue inside; of a short-waisted olive coat,
with a codfish tail, a double row of silver buttons set close to each
other and running up to the shoulder; and a pair of trousers of a
lighter shade of olive, ornamented on the two seams with an indefinite,
but always uneven, number of lines, varying from one to eleven—a limit
which was never exceeded. Add to this, high shoes with little irons on
the heels, a tall hat with a narrow brim, hair worn in a tuft, an
enormous cane, and conversation set off by puns of Potier. Over all,
spurs and a moustache. At that epoch moustaches indicated the
bourgeois, and spurs the pedestrian.

The provincial dandy wore the longest of spurs and the fiercest of
moustaches.

It was the period of the conflict of the republics of South America
with the King of Spain, of Bolivar against Morillo. Narrow-brimmed hats
were royalist, and were called _morillos_; liberals wore hats with wide
brims, which were called _bolivars_.

Eight or ten months, then, after that which is related in the preceding
pages, towards the first of January, 1823, on a snowy evening, one of
these dandies, one of these unemployed, a “right thinker,” for he wore
a morillo, and was, moreover, warmly enveloped in one of those large
cloaks which completed the fashionable costume in cold weather, was
amusing himself by tormenting a creature who was prowling about in a
ball-dress, with neck uncovered and flowers in her hair, in front of
the officers’ café. This dandy was smoking, for he was decidedly
fashionable.

Each time that the woman passed in front of him, he bestowed on her,
together with a puff from his cigar, some apostrophe which he
considered witty and mirthful, such as, “How ugly you are!—Will you get
out of my sight?—You have no teeth!” etc., etc. This gentleman was
known as M. Bamatabois. The woman, a melancholy, decorated spectre
which went and came through the snow, made him no reply, did not even
glance at him, and nevertheless continued her promenade in silence, and
with a sombre regularity, which brought her every five minutes within
reach of this sarcasm, like the condemned soldier who returns under the
rods. The small effect which he produced no doubt piqued the lounger;
and taking advantage of a moment when her back was turned, he crept up
behind her with the gait of a wolf, and stifling his laugh, bent down,
picked up a handful of snow from the pavement, and thrust it abruptly
into her back, between her bare shoulders. The woman uttered a roar,
whirled round, gave a leap like a panther, and hurled herself upon the
man, burying her nails in his face, with the most frightful words which
could fall from the guard-room into the gutter. These insults, poured
forth in a voice roughened by brandy, did, indeed, proceed in hideous
wise from a mouth which lacked its two front teeth. It was Fantine.

At the noise thus produced, the officers ran out in throngs from the
café, passers-by collected, and a large and merry circle, hooting and
applauding, was formed around this whirlwind composed of two beings,
whom there was some difficulty in recognizing as a man and a woman: the
man struggling, his hat on the ground; the woman striking out with feet
and fists, bareheaded, howling, minus hair and teeth, livid with wrath,
horrible.

Suddenly a man of lofty stature emerged vivaciously from the crowd,
seized the woman by her satin bodice, which was covered with mud, and
said to her, “Follow me!”


The woman raised her head; her furious voice suddenly died away. Her
eyes were glassy; she turned pale instead of livid, and she trembled
with a quiver of terror. She had recognized Javert.

The dandy took advantage of the incident to make his escape.




MUNICIPAL POLICE


Javert thrust aside the spectators, broke the circle, and set out with
long strides towards the police station, which is situated at the
extremity of the square, dragging the wretched woman after him. She
yielded mechanically. Neither he nor she uttered a word. The cloud of
spectators followed, jesting, in a paroxysm of delight. Supreme misery
an occasion for obscenity.

On arriving at the police station, which was a low room, warmed by a
stove, with a glazed and grated door opening on the street, and guarded
by a detachment, Javert opened the door, entered with Fantine, and shut
the door behind him, to the great disappointment of the curious, who
raised themselves on tiptoe, and craned their necks in front of the
thick glass of the station-house, in their effort to see. Curiosity is
a sort of gluttony. To see is to devour.

On entering, Fantine fell down in a corner, motionless and mute,
crouching down like a terrified dog.

The sergeant of the guard brought a lighted candle to the table. Javert
seated himself, drew a sheet of stamped paper from his pocket, and
began to write.

This class of women is consigned by our laws entirely to the discretion
of the police. The latter do what they please, punish them, as seems
good to them, and confiscate at their will those two sorry things which
they entitle their industry and their liberty. Javert was impassive;
his grave face betrayed no emotion whatever. Nevertheless, he was
seriously and deeply preoccupied. It was one of those moments when he
was exercising without control, but subject to all the scruples of a
severe conscience, his redoubtable discretionary power. At that moment
he was conscious that his police agent’s stool was a tribunal. He was
entering judgment. He judged and condemned. He summoned all the ideas
which could possibly exist in his mind, around the great thing which he
was doing. The more he examined the deed of this woman, the more
shocked he felt. It was evident that he had just witnessed the
commission of a crime. He had just beheld, yonder, in the street,
society, in the person of a freeholder and an elector, insulted and
attacked by a creature who was outside all pales. A prostitute had made
an attempt on the life of a citizen. He had seen that, he, Javert. He
wrote in silence.

When he had finished he signed the paper, folded it, and said to the
sergeant of the guard, as he handed it to him, “Take three men and
conduct this creature to jail.”


Then, turning to Fantine, “You are to have six months of it.” The
unhappy woman shuddered.

“Six months! six months of prison!” she exclaimed. “Six months in which
to earn seven sous a day! But what will become of Cosette? My daughter!
my daughter! But I still owe the Thénardiers over a hundred francs; do
you know that, Monsieur Inspector?”


She dragged herself across the damp floor, among the muddy boots of all
those men, without rising, with clasped hands, and taking great strides
on her knees.

“Monsieur Javert,” said she, “I beseech your mercy. I assure you that I
was not in the wrong. If you had seen the beginning, you would have
seen. I swear to you by the good God that I was not to blame! That
gentleman, the bourgeois, whom I do not know, put snow in my back. Has
any one the right to put snow down our backs when we are walking along
peaceably, and doing no harm to any one? I am rather ill, as you see.
And then, he had been saying impertinent things to me for a long time:
‘You are ugly! you have no teeth!’ I know well that I have no longer
those teeth. I did nothing; I said to myself, ‘The gentleman is amusing
himself.’ I was honest with him; I did not speak to him. It was at that
moment that he put the snow down my back. Monsieur Javert, good
Monsieur Inspector! is there not some person here who saw it and can
tell you that this is quite true? Perhaps I did wrong to get angry. You
know that one is not master of one’s self at the first moment. One
gives way to vivacity; and then, when some one puts something cold down
your back just when you are not expecting it! I did wrong to spoil that
gentleman’s hat. Why did he go away? I would ask his pardon. Oh, my
God! It makes no difference to me whether I ask his pardon. Do me the
favor to-day, for this once, Monsieur Javert. Hold! you do not know
that in prison one can earn only seven sous a day; it is not the
government’s fault, but seven sous is one’s earnings; and just fancy, I
must pay one hundred francs, or my little girl will be sent to me. Oh,
my God! I cannot have her with me. What I do is so vile! Oh, my
Cosette! Oh, my little angel of the Holy Virgin! what will become of
her, poor creature? I will tell you: it is the Thénardiers,
inn-keepers, peasants; and such people are unreasonable. They want
money. Don’t put me in prison! You see, there is a little girl who will
be turned out into the street to get along as best she may, in the very
heart of the winter; and you must have pity on such a being, my good
Monsieur Javert. If she were older, she might earn her living; but it
cannot be done at that age. I am not a bad woman at bottom. It is not
cowardliness and gluttony that have made me what I am. If I have drunk
brandy, it was out of misery. I do not love it; but it benumbs the
senses. When I was happy, it was only necessary to glance into my
closets, and it would have been evident that I was not a coquettish and
untidy woman. I had linen, a great deal of linen. Have pity on me,
Monsieur Javert!”


She spoke thus, rent in twain, shaken with sobs, blinded with tears,
her neck bare, wringing her hands, and coughing with a dry, short
cough, stammering softly with a voice of agony. Great sorrow is a
divine and terrible ray, which transfigures the unhappy. At that moment
Fantine had become beautiful once more. From time to time she paused,
and tenderly kissed the police agent’s coat. She would have softened a
heart of granite; but a heart of wood cannot be softened.

“Come!” said Javert, “I have heard you out. Have you entirely finished?
You will get six months. Now march! The Eternal Father in person could
do nothing more.”


At these solemn words, _“the Eternal Father in person could do nothing
more,”_ she understood that her fate was sealed. She sank down,
murmuring, “Mercy!”


Javert turned his back.

The soldiers seized her by the arms.

A few moments earlier a man had entered, but no one had paid any heed
to him. He shut the door, leaned his back against it, and listened to
Fantine’s despairing supplications.

At the instant when the soldiers laid their hands upon the unfortunate
woman, who would not rise, he emerged from the shadow, and said:—

“One moment, if you please.”


Javert raised his eyes and recognized M. Madeleine. He removed his hat,
and, saluting him with a sort of aggrieved awkwardness:—

“Excuse me, Mr. Mayor—”


The words “Mr. Mayor” produced a curious effect upon Fantine. She rose
to her feet with one bound, like a spectre springing from the earth,
thrust aside the soldiers with both arms, walked straight up to M.
Madeleine before any one could prevent her, and gazing intently at him,
with a bewildered air, she cried:—

“Ah! so it is you who are M. le Maire!”


Then she burst into a laugh, and spit in his face.

M. Madeleine wiped his face, and said:—

“Inspector Javert, set this woman at liberty.”


Javert felt that he was on the verge of going mad. He experienced at
that moment, blow upon blow and almost simultaneously, the most violent
emotions which he had ever undergone in all his life. To see a woman of
the town spit in the mayor’s face was a thing so monstrous that, in his
most daring flights of fancy, he would have regarded it as a sacrilege
to believe it possible. On the other hand, at the very bottom of his
thought, he made a hideous comparison as to what this woman was, and as
to what this mayor might be; and then he, with horror, caught a glimpse
of I know not what simple explanation of this prodigious attack. But
when he beheld that mayor, that magistrate, calmly wipe his face and
say, _“Set this woman at liberty,”_ he underwent a sort of intoxication
of amazement; thought and word failed him equally; the sum total of
possible astonishment had been exceeded in his case. He remained mute.

The words had produced no less strange an effect on Fantine. She raised
her bare arm, and clung to the damper of the stove, like a person who
is reeling. Nevertheless, she glanced about her, and began to speak in
a low voice, as though talking to herself:—

“At liberty! I am to be allowed to go! I am not to go to prison for six
months! Who said that? It is not possible that any one could have said
that. I did not hear aright. It cannot have been that monster of a
mayor! Was it you, my good Monsieur Javert, who said that I was to be
set free? Oh, see here! I will tell you about it, and you will let me
go. That monster of a mayor, that old blackguard of a mayor, is the
cause of all. Just imagine, Monsieur Javert, he turned me out! all
because of a pack of rascally women, who gossip in the workroom. If
that is not a horror, what is? To dismiss a poor girl who is doing her
work honestly! Then I could no longer earn enough, and all this misery
followed. In the first place, there is one improvement which these
gentlemen of the police ought to make, and that is, to prevent prison
contractors from wronging poor people. I will explain it to you, you
see: you are earning twelve sous at shirt-making, the price falls to
nine sous; and it is not enough to live on. Then one has to become
whatever one can. As for me, I had my little Cosette, and I was
actually forced to become a bad woman. Now you understand how it is
that that blackguard of a mayor caused all the mischief. After that I
stamped on that gentleman’s hat in front of the officers’ café; but he
had spoiled my whole dress with snow. We women have but one silk dress
for evening wear. You see that I did not do wrong deliberately—truly,
Monsieur Javert; and everywhere I behold women who are far more wicked
than I, and who are much happier. O Monsieur Javert! it was you who
gave orders that I am to be set free, was it not? Make inquiries, speak
to my landlord; I am paying my rent now; they will tell you that I am
perfectly honest. Ah! my God! I beg your pardon; I have unintentionally
touched the damper of the stove, and it has made it smoke.”


M. Madeleine listened to her with profound attention. While she was
speaking, he fumbled in his waistcoat, drew out his purse and opened
it. It was empty. He put it back in his pocket. He said to Fantine,
“How much did you say that you owed?”


Fantine, who was looking at Javert only, turned towards him:—

“Was I speaking to you?”


Then, addressing the soldiers:—

“Say, you fellows, did you see how I spit in his face? Ah! you old
wretch of a mayor, you came here to frighten me, but I’m not afraid of
you. I am afraid of Monsieur Javert. I am afraid of my good Monsieur
Javert!”


So saying, she turned to the inspector again:—

“And yet, you see, Mr. Inspector, it is necessary to be just. I
understand that you are just, Mr. Inspector; in fact, it is perfectly
simple: a man amuses himself by putting snow down a woman’s back, and
that makes the officers laugh; one must divert themselves in some way;
and we—well, we are here for them to amuse themselves with, of course!
And then, you, you come; you are certainly obliged to preserve order,
you lead off the woman who is in the wrong; but on reflection, since
you are a good man, you say that I am to be set at liberty; it is for
the sake of the little one, for six months in prison would prevent my
supporting my child. ‘Only, don’t do it again, you hussy!’ Oh! I won’t
do it again, Monsieur Javert! They may do whatever they please to me
now; I will not stir. But to-day, you see, I cried because it hurt me.
I was not expecting that snow from the gentleman at all; and then as I
told you, I am not well; I have a cough; I seem to have a burning ball
in my stomach, and the doctor tells me, ‘Take care of yourself.’ Here,
feel, give me your hand; don’t be afraid—it is here.”


She no longer wept, her voice was caressing; she placed Javert’s coarse
hand on her delicate, white throat and looked smilingly at him.

All at once she rapidly adjusted her disordered garments, dropped the
folds of her skirt, which had been pushed up as she dragged herself
along, almost to the height of her knee, and stepped towards the door,
saying to the soldiers in a low voice, and with a friendly nod:—

“Children, Monsieur l’Inspecteur has said that I am to be released, and
I am going.”


She laid her hand on the latch of the door. One step more and she would
be in the street.

Javert up to that moment had remained erect, motionless, with his eyes
fixed on the ground, cast athwart this scene like some displaced
statue, which is waiting to be put away somewhere.

The sound of the latch roused him. He raised his head with an
expression of sovereign authority, an expression all the more alarming
in proportion as the authority rests on a low level, ferocious in the
wild beast, atrocious in the man of no estate.

“Sergeant!” he cried, “don’t you see that that jade is walking off! Who
bade you let her go?”


“I,” said Madeleine.

Fantine trembled at the sound of Javert’s voice, and let go of the
latch as a thief relinquishes the article which he has stolen. At the
sound of Madeleine’s voice she turned around, and from that moment
forth she uttered no word, nor dared so much as to breathe freely, but
her glance strayed from Madeleine to Javert, and from Javert to
Madeleine in turn, according to which was speaking.

It was evident that Javert must have been exasperated beyond measure
before he would permit himself to apostrophize the sergeant as he had
done, after the mayor’s suggestion that Fantine should be set at
liberty. Had he reached the point of forgetting the mayor’s presence?
Had he finally declared to himself that it was impossible that any
“authority” should have given such an order, and that the mayor must
certainly have said one thing by mistake for another, without intending
it? Or, in view of the enormities of which he had been a witness for
the past two hours, did he say to himself, that it was necessary to
recur to supreme resolutions, that it was indispensable that the small
should be made great, that the police spy should transform himself into
a magistrate, that the policeman should become a dispenser of justice,
and that, in this prodigious extremity, order, law, morality,
government, society in its entirety, was personified in him, Javert?

However that may be, when M. Madeleine uttered that word, _I_, as we
have just heard, Police Inspector Javert was seen to turn toward the
mayor, pale, cold, with blue lips, and a look of despair, his whole
body agitated by an imperceptible quiver and an unprecedented
occurrence, and say to him, with downcast eyes but a firm voice:—

“Mr. Mayor, that cannot be.”


“Why not?” said M. Madeleine.

“This miserable woman has insulted a citizen.”


“Inspector Javert,” replied the mayor, in a calm and conciliating tone,
“listen. You are an honest man, and I feel no hesitation in explaining
matters to you. Here is the true state of the case: I was passing
through the square just as you were leading this woman away; there were
still groups of people standing about, and I made inquiries and learned
everything; it was the townsman who was in the wrong and who should
have been arrested by properly conducted police.”


Javert retorted:—

“This wretch has just insulted Monsieur le Maire.”


“That concerns me,” said M. Madeleine. “My own insult belongs to me, I
think. I can do what I please about it.”


“I beg Monsieur le Maire’s pardon. The insult is not to him but to the
law.”


“Inspector Javert,” replied M. Madeleine, “the highest law is
conscience. I have heard this woman; I know what I am doing.”


“And I, Mr. Mayor, do not know what I see.”


“Then content yourself with obeying.”


“I am obeying my duty. My duty demands that this woman shall serve six
months in prison.”


M. Madeleine replied gently:—

“Heed this well; she will not serve a single day.”


At this decisive word, Javert ventured to fix a searching look on the
mayor and to say, but in a tone of voice that was still profoundly
respectful:—

“I am sorry to oppose Monsieur le Maire; it is for the first time in my
life, but he will permit me to remark that I am within the bounds of my
authority. I confine myself, since Monsieur le Maire desires it, to the
question of the gentleman. I was present. This woman flung herself on
Monsieur Bamatabois, who is an elector and the proprietor of that
handsome house with a balcony, which forms the corner of the esplanade,
three stories high and entirely of cut stone. Such things as there are
in the world! In any case, Monsieur le Maire, this is a question of
police regulations in the streets, and concerns me, and I shall detain
this woman Fantine.”


Then M. Madeleine folded his arms, and said in a severe voice which no
one in the town had heard hitherto:—

“The matter to which you refer is one connected with the municipal
police. According to the terms of articles nine, eleven, fifteen, and
sixty-six of the code of criminal examination, I am the judge. I order
that this woman shall be set at liberty.”


Javert ventured to make a final effort.

“But, Mr. Mayor—”


“I refer you to article eighty-one of the law of the 13th of December,
1799, in regard to arbitrary detention.”


“Monsieur le Maire, permit me—”


“Not another word.”


“But—”


“Leave the room,” said M. Madeleine.

Javert received the blow erect, full in the face, in his breast, like a
Russian soldier. He bowed to the very earth before the mayor and left
the room.

Fantine stood aside from the door and stared at him in amazement as he
passed.

Nevertheless, she also was the prey to a strange confusion. She had
just seen herself a subject of dispute between two opposing powers. She
had seen two men who held in their hands her liberty, her life, her
soul, her child, in combat before her very eyes; one of these men was
drawing her towards darkness, the other was leading her back towards
the light. In this conflict, viewed through the exaggerations of
terror, these two men had appeared to her like two giants; the one
spoke like her demon, the other like her good angel. The angel had
conquered the demon, and, strange to say, that which made her shudder
from head to foot was the fact that this angel, this liberator, was the
very man whom she abhorred, that mayor whom she had so long regarded as
the author of all her woes, that Madeleine! And at the very moment when
she had insulted him in so hideous a fashion, he had saved her! Had
she, then, been mistaken? Must she change her whole soul? She did not
know; she trembled. She listened in bewilderment, she looked on in
affright, and at every word uttered by M. Madeleine she felt the
frightful shades of hatred crumble and melt within her, and something
warm and ineffable, indescribable, which was both joy, confidence and
love, dawn in her heart.

When Javert had taken his departure, M. Madeleine turned to her and
said to her in a deliberate voice, like a serious man who does not wish
to weep and who finds some difficulty in speaking:—

“I have heard you. I knew nothing about what you have mentioned. I
believe that it is true, and I feel that it is true. I was even
ignorant of the fact that you had left my shop. Why did you not apply
to me? But here; I will pay your debts, I will send for your child, or
you shall go to her. You shall live here, in Paris, or where you
please. I undertake the care of your child and yourself. You shall not
work any longer if you do not like. I will give all the money you
require. You shall be honest and happy once more. And listen! I declare
to you that if all is as you say,—and I do not doubt it,—you have never
ceased to be virtuous and holy in the sight of God. Oh! poor woman.”


This was more than Fantine could bear. To have Cosette! To leave this
life of infamy. To live free, rich, happy, respectable with Cosette; to
see all these realities of paradise blossom of a sudden in the midst of
her misery. She stared stupidly at this man who was talking to her, and
could only give vent to two or three sobs, “Oh! Oh! Oh!”


Her limbs gave way beneath her, she knelt in front of M. Madeleine, and
before he could prevent her he felt her grasp his hand and press her
lips to it.

Then she fainted.




